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LEONORA 




The 

Tents of Wickecfness 


By 

MIRIAM COLES HARRIS 

AUTHOR OF “RUTLEDGE,” ETC. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
NEW YORK = MCMVII 


JLtbhARY of congress! 


Two CoDles Received ( 

OCT 4 

_Copyneht Entry 

CLASS 'A XXc., No, 

f?Z « 

COPY B. 


Copyright, 1907, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 


Published October, 1907 


PART I 



CHAPTER I 


I T had been an agitating morning in the convent. There 
was to be a fUe in the garden au profit des pauvres, be- 
ginning at three o’clock, and all the morning there had 
been showers and a gray sky and warm gloom in the atmos- 
phere. The children were almost crying with disappointment 
because the Normandy Farm would have to be abandoned, 
and because the open-air vaudeville must be transplanted 
to one of the class-rooms, and because the two ponies 
and the Jersey cow would be countermanded, and because 
the booths under the horse-chestnuts were even now being 
crowded into the hall. It seemed inconceivable that such 
a discipline should be sent. The little ones who could not 
help in the preparations made visits to the chapel, and 
said Aves for a clear afternoon. Sceur Marie Remedies 
had promised Heaven to make a neuvaine de Chemin de la 
Croix if the rain would stop, and that was a good deal for 
a poor lay sister to promise who had to be up at half-past 
four in the morning, and on her feet pretty nearly all the 
time till half-past eight at night. She would have to ask 
permission, she foresaw, to snip off a good slice of her recre- 
ation hour for nine days to make her Chemin de la Croix, 
but she thought a clear afternoon, insuring a good sale for 
the poor, was worth it. 

Sceur Marie Remedies was a Basque peasant, and she 
had an energy of faith that was only matched by her vigour 
of body. She was rather a little woman, with keen black 
eyes, a retrousse nose, a rough, seamed, brown skin, and the 
j oiliest laugh ever heard in a convent or out of one. She 
was more than content with her convent garden in the heart 
of Paris, and seemed to have no regrets for her Basque 

3 


4 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


hills. It was thought that she spent more time than the 
Kule exactly permitted in feeding the great dogs who 
guarded the convent, and in the care of the poultry yard. 
For the hens and chickens, indeed, she had une passion 
dereglee, and the chapel bell brought her reluctantly away 
from them, and she had been known two or three times to 
hurry in to Mass with a warm, white egg in each apron 
pocket, and even once a soft yellow ball of a chicken under 
her guimpe. This last was a grave scandal, however, and 
was never repeated. 

To-day, as the Angelus rang, the faint, misty clouds 
seemed to change their complexion — a, suspicion of yellow 
coloured them; by half -past twelve they had drifted apart, 
and some pale blue sky appeared between. Soeur Marie 
Kemedios threw up her hands, and ran laughing across 
the garden. Old Toussaint, the gardener, muttered Deo 
Gratias; the children shrieked with glee; the lay sisters 
passing each other on their swift errands exchanged de- 
lighted smiles ; the choir sisters directing the retarded work 
looked relieved and happy. Soeur Marie Kemedios felt it 
was all her Chemins de la Croix, and said so in Basque to 
le hon Dieu, who understands all languages. 

A young girl, dressed in the blue uniform of the school, 
stood in the great doorway of the convent, and, as if un- 
affected by the busy atmosphere, paused and gazed out with 
a thoughtful look into the winding paths of the garden. 
She was tall and elegantly slender, her complexion was 
noticeably beautiful; she had fine eyes of bluish gray, yel- 
lowish-brown hair growing low on the forehead, delicately 
marked eyebrows, and a lovely, sensitive mouth. Her chin 
showed firmness ; her eyes were fixed on the scene before her, 
not with the dreaminess of girlhood, but with a certain 
thoughtfulness. She was nineteen years old, and that day 
was to quit the convent which had been her home for twelve 
years. She was wondering what it would be like, the life 
to which she was going on the other side of the ocean; 
whether she could stand alone when these props were taken 
from her; how much of the peace and innocence of the 
convent she could carry with her. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


5 


“ There is no use in speculating,” she said to herself 
at last. “ God is engaged to take care of me. I mean to 
do right.” And with a sigh, part of relief, part of resolu- 
tion, she stepped out into the garden and walked quickly 
to the wide space under the chestnuts where the crowd of 
sisters and children were busy arranging the booths, and in 
a few minutes she was as occupied as they. 

The air by the time the fHe opened was balmy and soft, 
the sky blue, and the sun shining. It was the middle of 
May, and the garden looked its best. The public,” who 
were admitted to the inclosure but this only day in the 
year, consisted of the parents and guardians of the children, 
and such intimate family friends as were invited by them. 
Brothers over nine were not allowed, and no unmarried 
men. This limited the profits of the poor, no doubt, but 
it did not seem to limit the pleasure and interest of the 
shy, pretty French girls just budding into womanhood, who 
had not as yet known any stronger social stimulant. 

The affair was in full swing; the Mormandy Farm, with 
its Jersey cow and its dozen little girls in peasant costume, 
was reaping a rich harvest from the sale of glasses of milk 
and pats of butter, little cheeses, fresh eggs and fruits. The 
booths under the chestnut trees, presided over by countesses 
and marchionesses, were being rapidly depleted of their ama- 
teur paintings and embroideries ; the play, the great work of 
the day, was going through its first representation in the 
chalet before a crowded and enthusiastic house ; the bonbons 
and the fiowers were being changed into francs and louis with 
a gratifying speed. French mammas and papas were ex- 
changing voluble greetings with other French mammas and 
papas. Black-eyed children were running hither and yon; 
dark-eyed young girls were making hien eleve bargains with 
such a flush of excitement on their pale cheeks as revealed 
it was an epoch in their lives. 

Upon this scene of innocent, and to him incomprehen- 
sible, gayety entered the father of the young American 
whose twelve years of convent life were to end to-day. He 
looked around for his daughter, but she was busy at the 
other end of the garden and did not see him ; so he sauntered 


6 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


about alone, with many reflections upon the diversity of 
national character. 

He was a very handsome man, nearly fifty-five, but look- 
ing younger. He had the good clothes of an Englishman, 
the good manners of a Frenchman, and the ready, assimi- 
lating brain of an American. His wife had died when 
their only living child — this tall young Leonora — was seven. 
Since that desolating event (he was really very much cut 
up when she died) he had led an entirely untrammelled life. 
He had a large fortune, good health, and very little business 
care. The child he had placed at the convent in fulfilment 
of a promise to his wife on her death-bed. The wife was a 
convert, the only one of her family who was a Catholic, and 
in no other way could she have secured the child’s being 
brought up in her own faith. Some distant cousins, who 
made the most of their remote connection, would have liked 
the guardianship of the young heiress, and freely said he 
had been to blame in making the promise and in keeping it 
after he had made it. He thought well of himself at first 
for ignoring these criticisms and for having kept faith with 
the dead, but later he acknowledged to himself that virtue 
had been its own reward. For where else could he have 
found so safe a home for the child, and an arrangement 
which, being fixed, gave .him so little care? From year’s end 
to year’s end, beyond paying the modest bills presented, he 
had nothing to do. In the summer he sometimes came over 
to see her, and twice he had taken her away with him to 
Switzerland for a few weeks. She had grown to be a beau- 
tiful, well-mannered, and charming girl, and he felt he had 
reason to be proud of her, and of himself for having been 
wise enough to leave her at the convent. How it was time 
to take her home and bring her out in society, and he had 
forced himself to make provision for that, to him, very dis- 
tasteful event. Though deprecating exceedingly the change 
involved to himself and his way of living, he recognised it 
as a duty, and saw he could not shirk it any longer. Nine- 
teen was as late as it was decent to keep her at school. 
They were to take the midnight train to Havre that night, 
and to-morrow betimes they were to sail on the Touraine. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


7 


In his wanderings through the garden he nearly ran over 
a little being in green gauze wings and a green silk dress. 
He asked her pardon and made some further advances, and 
received the explanation that she was a Cigaley and that the 
Fourmis and she had taken advantage of an intermission in 
the performance to come out of their little open-air theatre 
and get some nougat. He gallantly asked the privilege of 
adding a box of bonbons to their refreshment. She shyly 
consented and ran to call her companion. So, with the 
green-gauze Cigale by one hand and the Fourmis in black 
Turkish trousers and a white cap with antennae by the other, 
he crossed the lawn to where he recognised Leonora busy at 
a table. She was enchanted to see him with the children, 
and took it as a sign he was enjoying himself. 

“ I was so afraid you would be bored,” she said, filling 
the young actresses’ hands with bonbons and taking a good 
deal out of the louis he gave her in payment. 

Her father forebore to say her fears were well founded. 
He even furthered the illusion by going back with the little 
girls to hear the next recitation of the fable, leaving her 
still busy with the table she served. By and by he strolled 
back and asked her if she did not think it was time for 
them to go. Her eyes fell. 

wonder if you’d think it unreasonable,” she said 
hesitatingly, “ if I asked you to let me stay till time to go 
to the train? There is so much to be done here, I want to 
help. And — and — I’d like to stay. It’s my last night, you 
know.” 

“I have ordered dinner at the Kitz, and I’ve asked the 
Dearborns.” 

Oh, if — if you mind — ” she said. 

“No, no,” he returned, seeing her regret. “Only be 
ready at half -past nine.” 

And he went away, reflecting on the exercise of the 
black art in convents that could make an American girl of 
nineteen prefer this garden party au profit des pauvres to a 
dinner of six at the Hotel Bitz, 

It was nearly ten o’clock when he drove up to the side 
entrance on the placOy where, in a little pavilion belonging 


8 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


to the convent, Leonora had her rooms. Old Toussaint 
opened the big doors of the porte-cochere to bring out the 
trunks. Mr. Hungerford leaned back in the carriage and 
waited patiently for his daughter, looking thoughtfully into 
the convent garden seen beyond the stone arch of the porte- 
cochere, Some lamps not in sight gave a green glow to the 
trees; it was a pretty scene, he thought. 

Several minutes passed; he began with a little impa- 
tience to look at his watch; it would be a bad business if 
they were late at the gare and had to hurry registering all 
those trunks which, piled up mountain high, had just been 
rattled off down the place. At last, under the stone arch, 
appeared “ a bevy of the maids of heaven,” and in their 
midst, with bowed head, was Leonora. A flutter of white 
veils and purple habits, some silent embraces, and she seemed 
to tear herself from them; then hurrying across the stone 
court, she got into the carriage, stumbling almost as she 
did it. Mot speaking to her father, she gazed back at the 
group she had left; he felt her trembling and catching her 
breath as she leaned out and made a quick gesture of fare- 
well. The horses started forward; in an instant they were 
out of sight of the group of nuns under the arch, with the 
background of green trees and flickering lamplight shadows. 

Leonora, with suppressed sobs, threw herself back in the 
carriage. Her father had never seen her cry since she was 
a little child; he had not supposed she was that kind. He 
did not know what to do, but he thought it was a safe meas- 
ure to pat her hand, which was near his. It was not so safe 
as he fancied; the silent expression of sympathy overcame 
her; she laid her head down on his shoulder and clung to 
his hand, and did not try to suppress her sobs. He felt it 
was extremely awkward. So many years had passed since 
any woman had laid her head on his shoulder and given 
way to an irreproachable burst of feeling, a respectable 
grief. It made him a little hot and uncomfortable to think 
of the emotions he had had to assuage on this same shoul- 
der — such very different emotions! Mot about nuns. 

There, there, my dear,” he said at last, “ you mustn’t 
give way so. You’ll soon get over it. This time next month 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


9 


you’ll wonder at yourself.” But she did not stop crying. 
“ It is natural,” he went on, “ that you should be sorry about 
leaving the convent where you’ve been so long. These good 
women have been kind to you, no doubt, but there’s no need 
for you to break your heart about them. They’re kind to 
everybody, I suppose. It’s part of their system, but they 
shouldn’t work upon your feelings.” 

She stopped crying abruptly, and after a moment de- 
tached her hand quietly from his and straightened herself 
and looked out of the carriage. He did not quite know 
whether he had made a success of it or not — he rather feared 
not; but he was glad she had stopped crying, in any case. 
He noticed also with relief that a few minutes later she 
answered in a steady voice and without the husky residuum 
of tears, something that he said about the lamps in the 
Champs Elysees, as the carriage rolled across its smooth 
pavement. Self-control is an excellent thing in a woman, 
particularly if you have to live in the house with her. 

The fountain of poor Leonora’s tears had been turned 
off so suddenly that it threatened to suffuse her heart and 
spread poison through her nature. She had not looked for 
much sympathy from her father. II ne faut pas se fairs 
illusion; her father and she had lived in different worlds. 
She had threatened herself with many disappointments; but 
to-night she had forgotten the threats of her common sense 
and had turned to him for pity. 

“ Those good women.” How the words rankled ! There 
was a subtle contempt in them. In his eyes they were all 
classed together; there was no more distinction in their 
characters than in their guimpes and veils. There was one 
of whose sparkling wit she thought, another of whose tal- 
ent for administration all made use; the exalted spiritual- 
ity of this one, the tender charity that characterised that 
one, the common sense and practical housewifery of an- 
other, the profound and keen intellect of yet another — ^how 
unlike they all were, how individual! Did her father think 
that convents were all filled with tame, insipid beings cut out 
on the same pattern, lifeless, limp? And did he think that 
there was written up over every convent gate : Who enters 


10 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


here leaves sense of humour behind’’? Oh, the gay jests of 
the recreation hour, the merry groups of nuns roaming 
among the trees of the garden with the joy, with almost the 
innocence of the unfallen Eve! 

Did he think they lacked interests — they, with their arms 
full of children, in the repairing of whose parents’ errors or 
indifferences they were spending their very souls? Did he 
think they knew nothing of life — they, to whom tales of 
sorrow and sin were daily told? Did he fancy that their 
peaceful living together came from ignorance, or that they 
were too dull to quarrel? She recalled the more than fifty 
nuns whom she had seen living together there in an un- 
broken harmony for all these years. They were of many 
different nationalities; there were as many different family 
traditions as there were nuns. Whence came this marvellous 
accord in community life ? She could not make him under- 
stand the divine secret of the religious life, the only suc- 
cess of socialism. The inspired Rule that made them all 
dwell together in unity, that made them all to be of one 
mind in an house ” — extracted, ruthlessly perhaps it seemed, 
from each and every nature, the three deadly fangs of 
Avarice, Lust, and Pride. The human creature lies down 
meek and harmless after it is bound to Poverty, Chastity, 
and Obedience. 

These good women! Oh, yes, they were good, the world 
knew they were good. It trusted them, it used them, and 
then fiung them aside. It was very willing to let them do 
its work and rear its offspring, and when the result was 
accomplished, it was very prompt to withdraw the loan and 
give scant thanks. Oh, yes, “ they were good women ; they 
were kind to everybody; it was part of their system. But 
they mustn’t work upon the feelings of the children.” Oh, 
no. And how about their own? Had they any? How did 
they feel toward her, Leonora, who for twelve years had 
been to them as a daughter? They had watched over her 
infancy, had cared for her body, formed her conscience, 
trained her mind, loved her, yearned over her — and now in 
a moment she was taken from them, the doors closed behind 
her, and she was gone out of their lives for ever. Yes, they 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


11 


had done all that they had done pour Dieu seul, but it hurt 
to part with her, all the same; they were human, they had 
hearts. 

Mr. Hungerford looked out of his window and noted the 
gay pageant of the Paris streets this mild May night, and 
memories of past scenes of pleasure came into his mind. 
But Leonora, gazing out of her window, saw nothing that 
he saw; the convent garden, the still chapel where the red 
lamp burned night and day before the tabernacle, the little 
rooms stored with souvenirs of her life there — all this she 
saw. Everything, as that strange night went on, seemed to 
her unreal — the great flight of steps that led up to the gare^ 
the hurried crowds passing some to this gate, some to that, 
the gens d’armes, the porters; some soldiers, some priests, a 
group of peasant women with shawls over their heads and 
bundles in their arms, an American family with a child or 
two and many servants and mountains of hand-luggage, a 
French oflBicer and his wife, a German doctor and some 
hairy confreres^ a party of commercial travellers, noisy and 
vulgar. 

Her father took her into a sort of pen, where a few peo- 
ple of the better class were waiting, and sent away his valet 
to see about the trunks. It was a long time before the 
Havre train was made up, and before, with a sudden rush, 
porters seized the hand-luggage, and they were all swept 
along by the crowd out to the platform. Baptiste, the valet, 
stood defending the door of a compartment which was be- 
sieged by the 'commercial travellers and the German doc- 
tor’s party. Their principles would not permit them to 
recognise the right of a gentleman to send his menial ahead 
to secure his place. Before Mr. Hungerford could put 
Leonora in, the men had pushed in and nearly filled the 
compartment. He was very angry, the valet was pale and 
frightened, Leonora was startled out of her dream. 

At this moment a well-dressed man, young and distingue^ 
approached Mr. Hungerford and, lifting his hat, asked him 
to take his place in the compartment just ahead, which was 
almost empty, offering himself to get in this. 

There was evidently a short provision for the number 


12 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


booked on the special train. ISTo time remained to oblige 
the company to put on more carriages; there was nothing 
for it but to accept the civil and unnecessary offer of the 
young man, who took his place in the disputed compart- 
ment among the commercial travellers, and left Mr. Hun- 
gerford free to take his daughter into the one he had vacated 
in front. 

It was a bad beginning of the journey. Mr. Hungerford 
felt he had made a mistake in trusting to the valet, and the 
valet felt, as he slunk into the only vacant seat in a rear 
car, that his days were numbered in the service of monsieur. 

Monsieur, meanwhile, settled himself in the corner and 
went to sleep. The middle-aged Englishwoman, who was 
their only companion, stretched herself out at full length 
and did the same. Leonora sat gazing out of the window, 
sleepless and full of a deep dramatic sense of what was 
happening to her. As long as she lived she remembered the 
look of the sleeping towns through which they went; of 
the low-lying misty meadows — of a still pool in which the 
stars shone. Toward dawn, against the pale green sky she 
saw the towers of Eouen Cathedral. It seemed to her she 
was keeping the vigil of an unknown feast appointed for 
her by destiny. 

At Kouen the train stopped. She heard the guard say 
there would be a detention of several minutes; it was very 
still, except for the faint puffing of the engine and the 
pacing of an official up and down the platform. She longed 
for the cool, early morning air, and leaned out of the win- 
dow. A bushy German head was protruded from the next 
carriage and withdrawn with a great yawn. Nobody else 
seemed waking. She gazed at the silent town and the faintly 
coloured sky above it, leaning out with her arms on the 
window. Presently the door of the carriage adjoining was 
opened, and the young man who had given his place up to 
them stepped out and reinforced the official in his march 
up and down the platform. Perhaps he did not find the 
commercial travellers and the German doctor soothing to 
his nerves ; at any rate here he was, and Leonora, with some 
compunction for having driven Him from his comfortable 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


13 


compartment, drew back from the window. But in doing 
so something dropped from her hands and fell with a rat- 
tling noise on the platform. She gave a little cry, and 
leaned out, looking down. The young man, whose pacing 
had brought him directly opposite the window at that mo- 
ment, stopped and, lifting his hat, asked awkwardly if he 
could do anything for her. 

^^I’ve dropped my chapelet’^ she said anxiously; “Fm 
afraid it will fall between the hoards.” 

He stooped and tried to find it, but the platform was 
in deep shadow just there, and he could see nothing. I 
can’t find anything,” he said. 

“ Oh,’^ she exclaimed, trying to push the door open to get 
out, “ I shall be so sorry to lose it ; I care so much for it ! ” 

The door would not open, and in her fear that the train 
would start before it was found, she put out her hand and 
tried to turn the handle from the outside. The young man 
raised himself from his stooping search and also tried to 
open it, but it would not move. 

Oh, don’t waste time trying to get the door open, but 
look for the chapelet, please! I know it must be there. I 
heard it fall. There, there, just under the window; it can’t 
but be there.” 

“ There isn’t anything,” he said, . groping about with his 
hands. “ Is it — ^very — ^very small ? ” 

“ Ho, no, only medium, quite an ordinary size. Oh, there 
is the whistle of the other train ! ” 

“ I’m sorry,” he said ; “ perhaps the guard can help us — 
but there! He’s gone ” 

The guard had hurried away to set some signal; the 
coming train sounded nearer every instant. Oh, there’s 
no use,” she cried despairingly. 

If I only knew what I was looking for,” he said, rather 
hotly, getting up, there’d be more chance of my finding it. 

But when I don’t know what on earth the thing is ” 

Why,” she cried, “ it’s a string of beads — a rosary, you 
know.” 

With a sudden inspiration he bent down again, passed 
his hand along the edge of the platform under the step, and 
2 


14 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


there, hanging from an accidental nail, hung the chapelet. 
Leonora gave an exclamation of relief, and, as he put it 
into her hand, murmured some thanks, in the midst of 
which the train began to move. He hurriedly lifted his hat, 
turned, and sprang to the step of his carriage, missed it, 
staggered forward, by a great effort regained his footing, 
and the last Leonora saw of him as they sped away he was 
standing, dazed, looking after it. She was much agitated, 
and roused her father, entreating him to try to stop the 
train, and explaining that it was all her fault. Her father, 
irritable at being disturbed, said the fellow might have had 
better business. If he lost the steamer he would have no- 
body but himself to thank. Why wasn’t he in the carriage 
asleep like other people? If he had been, he wouldn’t have 
got left. 

“ But it was for being civil to us he was in that crowded, 
horrid compartment ” 

Too civil by half,” returned her father, adjusting his 
travelling cap. I have no patience with that forth-putting 
sort of person, always wanting to be ‘ of service ’ when 
there’s a good-looking girl about. Confound his services.” 
He wrapped the rug afresh around his legs and twisted his 
shoulders into place between the cushions; then he added, 
before he closed his eyes : “ I hope they have taught you at 
the convent how to act in such cases. If they haven’t, I 
shall be very sorry I left you there so long.” And he shut 
his eyes and seemed to sleep. 

Leonora flushed with vexation and shame. The young 
man had not been forth-putting, she said to herself ; neither 
had she been to blame, except for her carelessness in drop- 
ping her chapelet. The nuns had not given her any specific 
rules for conduct, but they had tried to teach her modesty 
and dignity, and if she were not modest and dignified it 
was not their fault, but hers. Should they have told her 
she must not drop her chapelet out of the carriage window, 
but if she did, by any evil chance, she must not thank any 
man other than the guard who picked it up for her? Her 
father was unjust; he would always be blaming the nuns, 
whatever happened. She must be careful not to disgrace 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


15 


lier convent, but she hated injustice. That poor fellow 
might lose his passage-money, might miss some important 
business waiting for him on the other side, might disappoint 
his family, be put to no end of trouble and expense; but it 
was not her fault, nor the nuns’, nor his. She resolved not 
to worry about it, but she could not help worrying. The 
train, which had not seemed to go very fast through the 
night, now seemed to her to be flying, racing, tearing to 
catch the Touraine, which would not wait a moment beyond 
her sailing hour for them. How could he get there? Was 
there ever any time to spare at Havre? Was there any 
local train that might follow this? Could he get a special 
train, if he could afford to pay for it ? She had no one of 
whom to ask questions; she had no Indicateur, The land- 
scape in the dawn was of no interest to her; she only wished 
they did not go so fast past the towns and villages; that 
poor man must be in such a fret, telegraphing, telephoning, 
waking up officials, demanding redress, threatening damages. 
He had looked to her like a man who would know what 
were his rights, though he was not forth-putting — certainly 
not forth-putting. But it was all a shame, and so unneces- 
sary. He would never forgive himself for that one little 
impulse of kindness to her — how angry he must be about 
it now; but, all the same, it was not her fault. 

At last, in the full sunlight of a spring morning, they 
steamed into Havre, slowing down and picking their way 
carefully, as became a special train, along to the very wharf 
itself. The people tumbled out of their carriages when the 
train stopped, stretched themselves, and looked around, as 
if they had slept an unbroken sleep since midnight. The 
stout Englishwoman who was Lieonora’s vis-d-vis roused 
herself and sat up, straightening a humorous sort of bonnet 
she wore and pulling her shirt-waist down. Mr. Hunger- 
ford got up, shook down his coat, with both hands on the 
collar, put away his cap, and took his hat from the rack. 
The valet came in like a whipped dog and obsequiously 
gathered up the hand-luggage and gave it to the porter. 

On the wharf there was some delay, but Anally they went 
on board. The sleepy passengers went into the saloon to get 


16 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


their coffee and rolls. Mr. Hungerford ordered his and Leo- 
nora’s to be served as far away from the others as possible, 
so she had no chance to ask any one whether the steamer 
started before another train could g’et in from Rouen. 

When she went into her cabin she gave the stewardess 
five francs and bade her go and ascertain. The woman came 
back and said nobody could tell her — the officers were busy 
and the men did not know. So Leonora hastily arranged 
her hair and went on deck, and gazed anxiously down upon 
the gangplank, over which people were hurrying and which 
was guarded by men in uniform. There was a great thump- 
ing of baggage at the other end of the boat, the clanking of 
chains, and a great deal of shouting. All this went on for 
an hour; every moment she thought was their last. NTobody 
came over the gangplank who bore the faintest resemblance 
to the young man of the chapelet. One of the officers of the 
boat hurried past her. How she longed to stop him and ask 
him about the trains! She could not, for her father would 
bltoe the nuns if she did. She ventured some inquiries of 
a sailor who was busy at a rope near her. But he was a 
sailor and knew as much about transportation on land as 
a salmon or a mackerel would. Another half-hour passed. 
There were some alarmingly sharp whistles and a subsidence 
of the detonation at the baggage end of the ship. The mo- 
ment was coming. Her father sauntered toward her as she 
leaned anxiously over the rail. He was well groomed and 
showed that he had surmounted the trial of the lost sleeper. 
Baptiste was following humbly with a passenger-list for 
which he had been sent. A group of noisy young girls, who 
had already begun to flirt with the purser, hurried by and 
hung over the rail to wave their adieux to France. Their 
presence disaffected Mr. Hungerford, and he moved away, 
muttering criticisms on his fellow-countrywomen, which they 
evidently were. Leonora cast another look toward the gang- 
plank and followed him. They paced silently up and down 
the deck, now filling with people who had put on their sea- 
clothes, and were also come up to look their last on France, 
chiefly memorable to most of them as a huge bargain- 
counter, more or less deceptive, across which they had passed 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


17 


much valuable money. But to Leonora it was not a bargain- 
counter; it bad been her home, and all her affections were 
rooted there. Tears swam in her eyes as the plank was 
withdrawn and the ship moved off amid the dramatic little 
clamour, which, renewed every two weeks, must have grown 
very stale to the officers and crew. When she answered some 
question of her father’s, her voice trembled, and he did not 
seem to like it. This appeared to her unjust, for why had 
he left her at the convent so long if he had not been willing 
that she should love those with whom he had left her? 
Between her effort to conceal all feeling for the nuns and 
all regret at leaving them, and her fear of bringing dis- 
credit on their training of her, she was becoming very con- 
strained. It was a relief when he met an acquaintance and 
she was able to go down to her cabin and cry. 


I 


CHAPTER II 


S HE had almost forgotten the episode of the chapelet 
in the homesickness which had overcome her as the 
shores of France faded from the rim of the porthole. 
It was recalled to her, however, as, having taken her place 
beside her father at luncheon, she lifted her eyes and saw 
the young man sitting on the opposite side of the table, a 
little farther down. Then he had got there in time, after 
all! In her relief and surprise she felt herself colouring; 
the most natural thing would have been to give him a little 
smile of recognition, but fear of her father’s disapprobation 
checked her. She did not care so much that he should 
blame her as that he should disapprove the nuns, so she 
looked quickly away instead of bowing. 

Leonora and her father had the places of honour at the 
captain’s table, always a picked company to whom it is a 
seven days’ patent of nobility. Next Leonora was a man 
whom her father presented to her, and who was, she feared 
from their familiarity, a part of the world to which she was 
going. He was a well-made man of forty-five, blond, with 
rather a full face, and having a slow way of speaking. His 
smile must have been pleasant before he had smiled so much 
and at such bad things. His voice was low and his manners 
were easy and in a queer sort of way the shadowy ghosts 
of good manners that come from a good heart. He was 
always nice ” to old people, he was always gentle to young 
girls; but one would say some evil blast had passed over 
him that had scorched the life out of the good heart. 

Leonora felt all this dumbly. What she could not know 
was that her father, aware of his bad past, was yet quite 
willing that he should be much in her company during the 

18 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


19 


voyage — and after the voyage was ended, if he chose. He 
was a favourite with a certain class of men who like to be 
amused and not to be offended with excesses. He was a 
gentleman, he had a good deal of money, “ and there were 
a great many worse fellows than he.” 

Mr. Hungerford frowned when he caught sight of the 
young man on the opposite side of the table, the flush on 
whose face, called up by Leonora’s avoidance of his eye, was 
just subsiding. No one should blame a father for surveil- 
lance; he knew just how bad Leonard Courtney had been; 
this tall young stranger was an unknown quantity. Better 
a sinner, securely seated socially than a young archangel 
whom nobody knows anything about. 

The rest of the table was made up of well-known peo- 
ple : a mother who was coming home to give her two daugh- 
ters a Newport season; a widow and her young son, who had 
been rather conspicuous members of the American colony in 
Rome; a young Frenchman who had great familiarity with 
New York society, and liked it; a bishop of the Episcopal 
Church and his well-dressed wife ; an eminent member of the 
New York bar who told good stories, and an artist who 
wrote as well as painted, and who had enough money to do 
anything he liked, and who consequently did nothing well. 
All these people were of one class socially; they all either 
knew, or might naturally know, each other. The young man 
who had got left at Rouen was the only one who seemed 
out of it.” His name was not on the passenger-list, owing 
perhaps to his late arrival. That he was at the captain’s 
table was probably due to his having given a resounding fee 
to the head steward, and also in some measure to his own 
good looks. It would have seemed natural for him to have 
been received by the other people at the table, and they 
showed no objection to receiving him; but, perhaps on ac- 
count of that unfortunate rebuff from Leonora, he evinced 
no desire to know any one. After the first few meals he 
became an object of general interest at the table because of 
his taciturnity. “ Who is he ? Why doesn’t he talk to any- 
body ? ” Speculations were many. The young women on their 
way to Newport were importunate in their inquiries of the 


20 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


captain and the other officers. N^othing could be elicited 
but that he had lost his train at Rouen and, whether by 
special train or otherwise no one could say, had reached 
the boat just before she swung off. He did not respond to 
treatment. He was civil and cold, talked with his imme- 
diate neighbours at table stiffiy, paced the deck by himself, 
and spent a good deal of time in the smoking-room. Leo- 
nora saw him occasionally talking with other male passen- 
gers of apparent respectability. Once she saw one of the 
young women who flirted with the purser go up to him with 
a steerage subscription list in her hand and much daring 
coquetry in her eye. He was not lacking in civility, nor yet 
in humanity, for he added some money to her list and 
walked with her two or three times up and down the deck. 
But the acquaintance seemed to go no further, and after 
that the young woman always looked at him with something 
like venom when she met him. 

“ He is young to be so virtuous,” Courtney said one day 
when they were sitting on the deck. He recommended the 
better looking of the two young women en route for New- 
port to try her hand upon him. It seemed possible that she 
had tried it, for she flushed and spoke of him with some 
contempt. 

“ I don’t know what it is about him,” she said, but you 
feel his want of breeding.” 

“ Oh, well, don’t mind that, just for once in a way,” said 
Courtney, with his slow smile; we’re at sea, you know. 
Crossing the water you naturally lose the scent — ^you needn’t 
pick it up again till you get on land.” 

Belinda shook her head. ^^I never lose the scent,” she 
returned, with a hard look on her young face. ‘‘I never 
choose to meet any but my social equals.” 

But how do you discriminate in America ? ” asked 
Leonora, annoyed; Belinda always annoyed her. 

Belinda was going to say something sharp, but her mother 
from her steamer-chair gave her a warning look. The 
Hungerf ords were their social superiors ; Belinda would fin d 
they were small game at Newport in comparison. There- 
fore Belinda made an effort to curb her temper, which was 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


21 


none of the best; and, after an instant of reflection, said 
slowly : 

Do you mean how do I — personally — discriminate, or 
how do people in America generally — discriminate ? ” 

“Well — you,” said Leonora, with a little laugh, “you 
are a typical American of the upper class. How do you 
know your social equals ? ” 

“ I know them,” returned Belinda shortly, avoiding her 
mother’s anxious eyes, “ I know them by their not being 
vulgar.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Leonora, letting her voice drop and looking 
away over the sea. She was thinking how very bad Belinda’s 
manners had always seemed to her, full of effrontery and 
freedom. 

The bishop had been pacing the deck in a stately man- 
ner (he looked as if he felt all the tribes of earth and air 
held him in full survey), and he had paused beside his wife’s 
chair, which was next Leonora’s. On the other side of 
Leonora was Courtney, leaning forward with his elbows on 
his knees, and next him the mother of Belinda, by whom 
Belinda stood with her hands in her pockets and her cap 
pulled down over her forehead. The afternoon was gray and 
dull, the water lead-coloured but not rough; the steady 
pulsation of the engines seemed not to run counter to the 
steady swell of the sea; even a bishop could walk the deck 
with dignity. The day had been long, every alleviation of 
its tedium had been resorted to by the bored party; the 
fourth meal, afternoon tea, would soon be brought to them. 
They had all yawned over their yellow novels, taken naps, 
taken walks, taken bets; they had talked over everybody on 
board with acrimonious gossip. 

“What is the point?” said the bishop mellifluously. 
“Whom are we to know by their not being vulgar?” 

“ Oqr social equals in America,” said Belinda, who had 
removed herself out of reach of a nudge from her mother. 
“ Do you think, bishop, that we haven’t as much a standard 
as other nations ? ” 

The bishop settled himself firmly on his legs, which were 
a little apart. He put his hands deep down in an ecclesias- 


22 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


tically constructed ulster. That is a large question, my 
dear young lady,” he said, a large question.” He had the 
air of one who settles himself to a long harangue. 

Courtney, who, it must be said, did not like street ad- 
vice” either in stocks or morals, moved with a slow uneasi- 
ness and loosened the rug from around his knees. He would 
stand a sermon in church with philosophy, if he were ever 
cornered into going to church, but on the high seas, and 
after such a long, dull day — no, not if he could help it 
would he listen to a diatribe on American manners and 
American social points of view. To prevent this he brought 
the conversation with a round turn back to personalities, and 
slowly rose. 

“We were talking,” he said, “ for the tenth time to-day, 
about your anonymous neighbour at table. We can’t seem 
to get away from him. He has risen into such an import- 
ance. If ever I want to be a man of note, I shall take a 
special train to catch my boat, forget to register, and fee 
the steward courageously to put me at the captain’s table.” 

“ Ah ! ” cried Mrs. Merritt, Belinda’s mother, in a purr- 
ing voice, “you would have to take a boat in the Caspian 
Sea if you did not want to be known. An Atlantic liner 
would not do.” 

He acknowledged the compliment with a faint smile, 
saying to himself, “ What does the • old cat want ? ” but to 
her: “What is fame? There should not be a boat on any 
sea that fails to know such an American as the one under 
discussion. He is approaching now. How could you pos- 
sibly ask more distinction ? ” 

The party ra*ther filled up the deck just there, standing 
and reclining, and with a good deal of litter of rugs and 
chairs; there was scarcely room for the solitary promenader 
to pass. Belinda said something in a low voice that made 
her neighbour laugh; Leonora did not catch it. Then, as 
the young man reached them, every one — let us hope unin- 
tentionally — stopped talking abruptly and covertly looked at 
him. The bishop took up a great deal of room in his clerical 
ulster and with his feet so securely planted on the deck; it 
did not occur to him to move. In making his way past him. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


23 


the young man encountered a campstool with a lot of books 
on it, which promptly toppled over. Instead of stooping to 
pick them up, he gave the campstool a kick which sent it 
over against the railing, and left the books sprawling on the 
floor, and strode on, looking neither to the right hand nor 
the left. 

“ There ! ” exclaimed Belinda, with subdued triumph. 

What have I told you ? ” 

Upon my word,” said the bishop, stooping stiffly down 
to pick up a book, “ upon my word, rather sunamary.” 

Oh, don’t bother about the books ! ” said Courtney, 
moving forward deliberately. “ I’ll pick them up.” 

Inexcusable ! ” murmured the bishop’s wife. 

Unmannerly ! ” exclaimed Belinda’s mother. 

‘‘Just what I’ve been telling you! ” cried Belinda. 

“ Miss Leonora, aren’t you tired of sitting still ? ” 
asked Courtney, shuffling the books upon his vacant chair. 
“ Shan’t we take a little walk before the steward brings 
the tea ? ” 

She was very glad to get away from hearing judgment 
passed on her unknown friend. Her sense of fair play was 
outraged at the treatment he had had from first to last. 
The way he had been baited! She was glad he had kicked 
the overturned campchair out of his path ; she almost wished 
he had thrown the books over into the sea. The books — yes, 
and Belinda, too — ^with a rope around her perhaps to pull 
her back when she said she was sorry. 

Leonora felt it was hard she could not say all this to 
Courtney as they walked up and down together on the other 
side of the boat, but she knew better than to do it. 

She was so tall, so gloriously coloured, all the chilly, 
peevish passengers stretched out like mummies in their 
deck-chairs followed her with their eyes as she passed 
them. 

“ I felt,” said Courtney, as they began their walk, “ that 
the episcopal utterance upon American manners would be 
the last drop in our cup. I am grateful to that young bear 
for creating a diversion and letting us off.” 

“ Why do you call him a young bear ? ” asked Leonora. 


24 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“ Wouldn’t you have done the same thing under the cir- 
cumstances ? ” 

^‘No,” said Courtney thoughtfully, ^^no; at his age I 
should have done something worse. Now, I shouldn’t do 
anything at all.” 

Would that be because you did not care, or because 
you would think it bad manners to do anything ? ” 

A little of both ; principally because I should not care 
enough to do it.” 

Don’t you think,” asked Leonora, “ that everybody at 
the table has been very nasty to him ? ” 

“ Unspeakably nasty.” 

Then — then — ^why don’t you stop it ? ” 

He shrugged his shoulders. “ That’s the sort of thing 
I don’t undertake,” he said. “ A man would have his hands 
full! No; this young fellow’s strong enough to take care 
of himself. It will do him good. It will take the cockiness 
out of him.” 

“ What makes you think he’s cocky ? ” asked Leonora. 

“ That’^ returned Courtney, glancing toward the young 
stranger, who had apparently come to this side of the deck 
to get away from his enemies, and who, suddenly find- 
ing himself confronted by two of them, turned abruptly 
into the door of the companionway to avoid passing 
them. 

‘‘ I don’t blame him in the least,” said Leonora stoutly, 
but flushing, nevertheless. Then they talked of other things, 
but Leonora thought, more than she would have liked any 
one to know, about the young man who had had such bad 
luck on her account. 

That night at dinner his place was vacant at the cap- 
tain’s table, and he was presently espied at a private table 
on the other side of the dining-room, with the sober and 
respectable professor of a Western college as his companion. 
The head waiter showed him such marked attention that it 
was evident he had bought him, body and soul. 

From that time till the end of the voyage the war may 
be said to have been on. His movements were the chief 
subject of interest among the women of the party to which 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


25 


Belinda belonged, and even the men of it allowed themselves 
to be beguiled into listening to reports of his doings. 

Leonora herself began to feel a little less sorry for him; 
he seemed to be able to take very good care of himself. It 
was impossible not to hear what they all said about him, 
and there was so little else to think about, that perhaps she 
did think of him unnecessarily. 

And so the days wore on to the happy afternoon when 
they took the pilot aboard and knew their voyage was near 
its end. It was sunset; the passengers were all crowding to 
the side of the vessel, looking down at the bobbing sail-boat 
and the valiant pilot making ready to climb up the ship’s 
side. Leonora, leaning on the rail, thought Courtney was 
standing behind her. 

“ What do they do,” she said, half turning to him, but 
still looking intently over at the pilot-boat, ‘‘what do they 
do in bad weather ? Isn’t it very dangerous ? ” 

'No answer came, and in a moment she repeated : “ Isn’t 
it very dangerous? You know, I’ve never seen it before. 
I don’t half like looking at it ! 

“ I — I beg your pardon,” said a voice not Courtney’s just 
over her shoulder. She turned and looked up at the young 
outlaw of the captain’s table, who had, in the crowd, been 
standing exactly behind her. The colour had rushed into 
his face, and she felt herself blushing, too. 

“ I — I — thought it was one of our party,” she said, agi- 
tatedly ; then, as if she had made a sudden resolution in the 
throes of her embarrassment : “ But perhaps you can tell me. 
Isn’t it very dangerous? Don’t pilots sometimes lose their 
lives in boarding ships ? ” 

“ Not in such a sea as this, I should fancy,” he returned 
coldly. 

Leonora bit her lips and felt much inclined to let him 
alone. But her sense of justice steadied her; though she 
knew he had a right to treat her as he did, it was a struggle 
to speak again. 

“ I suppose they are well-trained,” she said. “ But such 
a little thing — growing dizzy or anything — ^might make it 
all go wrong. Ah ! ” she cried out, and every woman look- 


26 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


ing cried out, too, and every man pressed closer to the rail 
and gazed down breathlessly. Something had gone wrong, 
some little thing, as Leonora had said. The pilot was a 
young fellow — probably it was his maiden ship ; he had per- 
haps a moment of stage fright while he swung over the 
black waves, his audience looking down at him, and his 
reputation in the balance. The suspense lasted only a min- 
ute; with a sigh of relief, the men looking on drew back 
and the women fell to oh-ing and ah-ing and then to chat- 
tering, and one of the young persons who flirted with the 
purser tried to faint, but was not enough noticed to make it 
worth while, and presently sat up and put her hat straight. 
Leonora still stood gazing down into the black water. Her 
companion was leaning on the rail, gazing down, too; the 
crowd had moved away, and they were alone. 

It was rather a close shave,” he said ; the fact of being 
so near a tragedy had shaken him out of his sulks. He was 
a little pale, and so was Leonora. 

“ Why do men choose such work as that ? ” she faltered. 
Somebody has to do it, I suppose,” he returned. 

But I canT think why anybody thinks he^s got to do 
it,” she said with a shudder ; “ swinging over that black 
water, just for a way of making your living, when you could 

make it some other way ” 

It shows he isn’t afraid,” returned the other. 

“But prize-fighters and people that jump off bridges 
aren’t afraid either, are they? But does that make them 
heroes ? ” 

“Ho; but their not being afraid is something — to men.” 

By this time the shock and excitement had worn off a 
little, and the awkwardness of being seen in conversation 
with him was pitted against the interest of it. She felt 
herself colouring and she knew her heart was beating rather 
quick. But she could not think of anything to say, and she 
was not sure that she ought not to go away, though cer- 
tainly she did not want to. She leaned over the rail and 
dropped into the steely waves below violet after violet of a 
half -faded bunch she wore. Her companion went on at last, 
as she did not find her voice : 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


27 


Different men are afraid of different things ; but as 
this thing’s got to be done, it’s lucky for us who want to 
be put safely ashore that there’s somebody that’s willing 
to do it.” 

“ Oh, won’t you be glad to get ashore ! ” she said ; and 
then a sudden panic came over her lest he should think she 
meant to taunt him with his ill-luck aboard the horrid ship. 
And she stammered out : I mean — I think — everybody’s 
tired of it,” and blushed a flaming red. 

“ Leonora ! ” A cold voice sounded behind them, a few 
feet away. . They both started. 

“ Oh, papa ! ” murmured Leonora agitatedly. 

have been looking for you. You have my keys; I 
want them.” With a frightened movement of the head, 
which did duty for a bow, Leonora turned away and fol- 
lowed her father. 

“ Why were you talking to that man ? ” 

“ I don’t know ; we were looking at the pilot. Everybody 
talked together while we were watching him.” 

I thought you knew how I felt about it.” 

The next morning was fine; all were up betimes; the 
Custom-house ofiicers had come on board, and as soon as 
the tables were cleared, every one filed into the saloon to 
make their declarations or denials or what not. The im- 
munity from the disagreeable that a reputation for wealth 
brings secured a short shrift for Mr. Hungerford and his 
daughter. In some way their turn came very early, even 
though they had entered among the last. 

The day was lovely; the steamer made its slow, steady 
way in sight of beautiful green fields, the first glance at 
which gave Leonora a strange sensation after their seven 
days of barren sea. And this spot to which they were draw- 
ing near was to be her home, where she was to live her life, 
where she was to do good or ill, where she was to be happy 
or miserable. This new experience was giving her many 
emotions; she was at an age and of a temperament to take 
things dramatically, though with outward calm. Every sight 
and sound of the voyage, every pulsation of the great ship, 


28 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


every phase of sky and sea, every characteristic of the peo- 
ple she had met, every incident of the seven days, so long 
in passing, so short in retrospect, had filled her memory, ex- 
cited her imagination, wrought upon her feelings. She 
wanted time to remember it all, to pass judgment upon what 
was gone, to prepare for what was to come. She would have 
liked to shut herself into her cabin and say prayers and 
prayers. But the stewards had taken possession of it, in a 
hurry to tear it to pieces and get it ready for the. next 
comer; le roi est mort, vive le roi. Her hand-luggage was 
taken on deck ; everything was in confusion below ; she could 
only go upstairs, where the passengers, dressed for landing, 
looked like other people. The rugs and deck chairs were 
all strapped up, everything seemed in a state of slow transi- 
tion, suffering a land change. The sunshine was warm, fogs 
were not, nor dampness, nor sickness, nor chill. The people 
had even forgotten to gossip. Men were engrossed in the 
papers that had been brought on board with the Custom- 
house boat ; women were wondering who would come to meet 
them and what had happened in the long week of silence. 
It was a slow morning; no one seemed to enjoy the glorious 
bay as they sailed up it; the commonplace seemed seizing 
upon them even before they were moored to it. 

At last! There was an enthusiasm. Men put papers 
away and women pressed forward, an eager crowd was wav- 
ing to them. They leaned over the taffrail and called out 
greetings and questions to the groups swarming over the 
side of the pier. When the plank was finally adjusted and 
the passengers began to go ashore, Leonora saw, among the 
first, the young man of Bouen. His memories of the voyage 
would not be very pleasant. He hurried down the plank, 
not looking behind, and was lost in the crowd. Leonora 
gave a little sigh. “ It’s a bad beginning,” she said. “ If 
I make everybody as uncomfortable I ” 


CHAPTER III 


T eh days later; it was a fine June afternoon. Leonora 
with a maid and a footman was making her way through 
a jostling crowd. Ahead of them the ferryboat bell 
was ringing, the engine of the elevated railroad above their 
heads was whistling, the street cars beside them were striking 
gongs, cabmen were calling out invitations to people coming 
off the just-arrived boat, truckmen were swearing at each 
other as they fought to get aboard the just-departing boat, 
boys were shouting extras. When they were once on board, 
Leonora drew a long breath, and wondered what the 
other side would be. When they got on the other side 
and into the train, with the maid in the seat behind her 
and the footman dismissed, she resigned herself to the new 
experience. 

Every hour since she landed had been full of novelties, 
some of them pleasant ones. She had found herself in a fine 
house, of which she was to be mistress; she seemed to have 
a large choice of everything — rooms and the furniture of 
rooms. The house was one in which her father had lived 
ever since his marriage, for which event it had been refur- 
nished in the taste of twenty-five years ago. He told Leon- 
ora she might make any changes she saw fit, and he gave her 
a bank-book and taught her how to draw checks. This in 
itself gave her emotions : she felt power put into her hands, 
and pleasure and responsibility and individuality and inde- 
pendence. It is surprising the education contained in one’s 
first check-book. Hitherto she had had her bills paid by the 
econome, and given a small supply of spending-money for her 
pocket, about the disbursement of which she had had gentle 
little convent admonitions of prudence. Somehow she could 
3 29 


30 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


not quite get rid of these; the virtue of la saint e pauvrete 
clung like a sweet and pious perfume to the check-book with 
its magical potencies. 

She had at the end of a week dismissed, with grave com- 
mon-sense, the illusion that she was to make a home for 
her father. It did not take her long to see that the club was 
his real home, and that nothing inside his house attracted 
him beyond the comfort he got out of it. She saw that she 
must live her own life and utter no reproaches, administer 
his house with good judgment, look possibly after the morals 
of his servants, see that he suffered no loss, and withal be 
grateful to him for his generous provision for her. All this 
seemed rather hard and barren, but she was full of youthful 
hope, and she intended to satisfy her conscience and do well 
what she had to do. Therefore these days had been vividly 
interesting, and she had been busy to the exclusion of home- 
sickness. To-day she was going out of town to stay from 
Friday to Monday with a Mrs. Pelletreau, whom her father 
characterised as one of his oldest friends; and she was told 
she would there be sure to meet some of “ the best people,” 
and he advised her to get herself up well and make a good 
impression. He himself was going off for Sunday in another 
direction, she was not quite sure where; she was new to the 
points of the compass and the names of places here. That 
she herself was booked for Long Island was as much geogra- 
phy as she had assimilated. But it was pleasant weather and 
she was young and the fields were green. 

When they had left the train the smooth-rolling carriage 
bowled them along over a pretty level country, green and 
smiling, if it was flat. The sunset was lovely, the air was 
full of dewy freshness; here and there among trees she saw 
pretty country-houses; three or four people on horseback 
swept past her, followed soon by a pony-cart with yellow- 
haired children overflowing it. Before a fine new house with 
Corinthian pillars, far back from the road, she caught sight 
through the scant foliage, of people on the veranda and 
carriages before the door. On this smooth calm green can- 
vas there seemed human interests painted. Who were these 
people? What sort were these homes? What would they be 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


31 


to her? She felt so full of health, of power to enjoy. With 
many gifts — ^youth, beauty, health, intelligence — she had also 
an innocence of evil that did not come entirely of ignorance, 
but more of inexperience. But in this enchanting sunset 
scene every thing was couleur de rose. She dreaded nothing, 
she only looked forward with pleasure to the new life which 
was just beginning. 

The carriage turned in at a gateway, and a short drive 
brought them to the house. A lady came forward to meet 
her. She was graceful and slender, not young, but sympa- 
thetically Understanding all ages. Old people felt she was 
old, young people that she was young. One would almost 
say men felt she was a man and understood their points of 
view; and with women she was the recipient of confidences, 
many and amazing. Amiability was a natural gift in her, 
carried on to a science by knowledge of the world. It seemed 
probable that she had never in her life expressed to any one 
disapprobation or dissent. This did not come from absence 
of disapprobation or dissent, but from a conviction it did no 
good to disapprove or dissent. 

In appearance she was pleasing; she never had been more 
than that in her youth, and she would probably be that to 
old age. She was always admirably dressed, her figure was 
wonderfully young, slender and supple, and her light hair 
did not show the gray that had begun to sprinkle it. Her 
pale eyes were near together, the outline of her features was 
attractive, and her voice was low and agreeable. When she 
came out on the veranda to welcome Leonora she was at 
her best, and her best was very good. As she put her arm 
around the girFs waist and led her to a seat on the veranda 
she said: 

“How good of your father to keep his promise! You 
know I have told him for the last year I claimed the first 
visit that he would let you make, and he gave me his word 
that you should come here before you went anywhere else.’^ 

“You know my father very well? He has often talked 
of you to me.’^ 

“ Oh, I don’t remember when I did not know him,” she 
said with a pleasant smile. “ I used to think him a perfect 


32 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Adonis when I was a little girl, and your mother I tried to 
copy, I remember, when I was at school.” 

Leonora had hoped, when she began, that she would go 
on and talk about her mother. It was one thought that had 
reconciled her to coming to America, that she should find 
some one who could tell her about her mother. There was 
no nun at the convent who had ever talked of her; no one 
there had known her, and it was a sacred and unspoken 
longing to hear something about her. But did she want to 
hear it from Mrs. Pelletreau? Her breath came quick; she 
glanced up and found the pale eyes on her face, trying to 
ascertain what the agitation was, and whether she had better 
go on. What she saw decided her not to go on, and Leonora 
felt she had been scrutinised, and shut her hope sharply up 
again in her heart. She knew Mrs. Pelletreau was feeling 
her way and trying to find out how to please her. Hobody 
likes to be pleased like that. 

^‘1 hope you are going to be happy in Mew York,” she 
said, gently taking Leonora’s parasol and book and handing 
them to a maid who stood waiting. I don’t see how you 
can help it, so many friends as your father has. A girl who 
has a popular father is always sure of being a success.’ 

Something went wrong again, the pale eyes detected a 
faint contraction of Leonora’s forehead. Try again — try 
duty ; she comes from a convent. And it must be such a 
pleasure for your father to have you. As a man gets older 
he needs something to renew — refresh his interest in society. 
That’s what children are for.” 

I only wish,” said Leonora, speaking naturally and relax- 
ing some intangible tension, “ I only wish I felt sure that 
my father would feel so about it. I am only afraid it will 
bore him to have to think about me. He has lived such an 
untrammelled life, and of course my being here must make a 
difference.” 

It will make a difference certainly,” she said with gentle 
earnestness, “ but it will be just what he needs. After fifty 
a man has got to have a little chimney-cornering, don’t you 
know, or he gets hard. And yet he can’t be expected to give 
up the world; and so when he goes into it with a daughter it 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


33 


gives a new flavour to the old dish and revives his appetite. 
Oh, you are a good thing for him, a very good thing.” 

“ I am glad you think so,” said Leonora. “ I hoped so 
before I came — but — but ” 

“ Take my word for it, it is a blessing, your coming. We 
all think so, all his friends.” 

Then she saw she had made another mistake; it seemed 
to her she had never made so many before. She might have 
known the girl would not like having been talked over, so 
she glided swiftly to another turn of the matter. “ And you 
will enjoy Newport, I am sure. What cottage has your 
father decided on ? — the Bonaldsons’ ? ” 

“ He has not decided yet. He is going there on Wednes- 
day, I think, to look at it.” Then they fell to talking about 
Newport houses and the sort of life it would be there, and 
then they went upstairs, the maid following, and Mrs. Pel- 
letreau left her in her room, where her tea had been sent, with 
many gentle but cautious endearments, and went away to 
rest before dinner. 

“ I don't get her,” she murmured, as if Leonora was a 
telephone number, “ but I shall keep on trying. She is a 
beauty; there are not many like her — far and away hand- 
somer than her mother ever was. Heigho ! the days that are 
no more ! It is no longer any business of mine, but I wish 
the child may be in time to keep things back awhile, if not 
to cure them. She has spirit, I can see. If she only isn’t too 
pious ! Ellen, my tea.” 

On the landing of the staircase there was a great mirror. 
Leonora glanced in it as she went down to dinner. The 
glow of pleasure that she felt at the reflection in it was so 
different from vanity that it was almost a merit, and was 
more than innocence. The sense of beauty, of harmony, the 
full pulse of health, all happy anticipations breathed from 
her lips in a sort of sigh, “ Que le Ion Dieu est bon pour 
moi! ” 

She went slowly down the stairs. The softly lighted 
lower hall was wide, the large door was open, and the night 
air drew in from the veranda through honeysuckles. A 


34 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


great branch of candles, reflected in a broad mirror, threw 
light on a large bowl filled with deep red roses. It all looked 
a scene of enchantment to her. The drawing-room door was 
open and a man-servant stood beside it. From within came 
the sound of voices. She thought she was not afraid. It 
was exhilarating; she liked it. As she crossed the threshold 
of the room those within stopped speaking involuntarily; 
her hostess came forward and took her hand and led her 
in. There were some names and some women said some- 
thing and some men bowed; she knew she was a little 
frightened now. And then she heard a shrill laugh that 
recalled the steamer, and Belinda fell upon her with great 
cordiality. 

Fancy our meeting so soon,’’ she cried. had a 

rendezvous for August at NTewport, hadn’t we? ” 

Belinda looked better in an evening dress than in a mack- 
intosh, but her voice recalled shaking and throbbing engines 
and the creaking of ropes. 

In a moment they were all going toward the dining-room — 
how, or with whom, Leonora did not know. It was so unex- 
pected to her, feeling like this. But insensibly she had been 
for a long while thinking about going into the world, and 
wondering about it, and this had taken a stronger hold upon 
her imagination than she had known. And here she was, in 
it and of it. The blue woollen convent uniform was gone 
for ever, the long narrow dining-table was gone, too, with its 
spotless linen and its scanty furniture, rows of plates, and 
napkin-rings and carafes and glasses, and long lines of blue- 
gowned children, and lay sisters waiting upon them, and 
silence while a choir sister read aloud to them from a pious 
book. Gone for ever into the past that swallows up every- 
thing — everything but our intention one way or the other — 
everything but our will, our purpose. The change was great, 
the senses were almost staggered. The soft splendour of the 
broad table with its exquisite appeal to the sight and smell 
and touch and taste, the subdued sounds, the rhythm of lux- 
ury and the satisfying of self, perfecting with finest art the 
surroundings of the life that now is — all this floated before 
Leonora’s eyes and vaguely affected her thoughts for the first 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


35 ‘ 

few moments. Then she drew a long breath and freed her- 
self from the spell. 

Some one at her side spoke; she turned and began to lis- 
ten. It was a man of fifty-five or sixty or thereabouts who was 
telling her he knew her father very well. He had a daugh- 
ter of about her age whom he wanted her to meet. She 
looked at him covertly, and was glad her father had not such 
an ochre tint and such a thick way of speaking. That, of 
course, he could not help, but somehow the glamour was fad- 
ing from the scene ; the art was faulty that could not banish 
ochre from the human face and thickness from the human 
throat. 

He was not allowed to talk to her long, for he was a great 
man, and everybody seemed to want his attention. He had 
just arrived on his yacht, which was anchored in the harbor, 
and his unexpected arrival and his gracious presence were 
sources of purest joy to his hostess and of unfeigned surprise 
and pleasure to her guests. His being drawn away from her 
gave Leonora time to look round the table and soon to glance 
at her neighbour on the other side, who had not spoken to 
her but who had been having some perfunctory conversation 
with a little restless woman, thin and fair, who was beyond 
him. Leonora knew it must have been he who brought her 
in to dinner, and she wanted to be civil and talk to him when 
he should turn toward her, which he presently did almost 
imperceptibly, furtively glancing at her. Their eyes met. 
It was the man who picked up her chapelet at Houen. She 
gave a low exclamation. 

‘‘How nice! I didn’t know it was you. I was a little 
frightened, I suppose. I have never been anywhere before. 
I did not even see Belinda Merritt till she came and screamed 
at me.” 

“ Well, that would wake anybody up,” he said with a sort 
of laugh. 

“Wouldn’t it?” she murmured under her breath. Then 
they both began to feel a little awkward as they remem- 
bered all that steamer business. His dinner-card lay on the 
side of the cloth next her, and she stealthily glanced at 
it. “ Mr. Paul Fairfax ” — so that was his name. Then the 


36 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


restless little woman on the other side of him began to talk 
to him, and as the ochre-tinted yachtsman next her was still 
engrossing most of the attention of their immediate neigh- 
bourhood, Leonora had time to look around the table. 

Opposite her was a handsome young woman. She looked 
young enough to be a girl, but they spoke of her as Mrs. — 
Mrs. Husted, Leonora thought — and Mrs. Pelletreau called 
her Pepita. Her dark, stormy eyes were lowered and raised 
restlessly as she furtively glanced from one face to another; 
she had now a high colour, now was pale. It was an effort 
for her to talk coherently to her neighbour ; Leonora saw her 
quick breathing and heard her random replies, and others 
were noticing them as well. The man next her, sandy and 
baldheaded, was watching her out of the corner of his eye 
as she made him quick and irrelevant answers, and Leonora 
saw him give a sharp glance expressive of amusement to 
Belinda, who was on the opposite side of the table. What 
did it all mean? The glamour was lifting still more off the 
scene; this was not good manners, much less good heart. 
The woman looked like a baited animal; she could not eat, 
her slender fingers beat on the table or pulled at the bracelets 
on her wrist. Once, when there was the faint sound of a bell 
outside followed by a footman bringing in a telegram, she 
turned deadly white and leaned back in her chair. But the 
despatch was only for the yellow yachtsman who, between his 
millions and his amours, was as subject to electric calls as a 
Central.” 

This call was not unpleasing, though he did not share his 
pleasure with the others; he smiled comfortably as he tore 
the paper into bits, and turning to Leonora asked her if she 
thought she was going to like America. He squared himself 
around toward her in his chair while they talked, and she 
felt his eyes uncomfortably on her face. “ Yes,” he thought, 
“ she has lovely colouring, and a pair of eyes to drive you 
crazy when you can see them. Her throat, the white dazzle 
of her shoulders under the too high tucker, the roundness of 
her perfect arms, the slenderness of her long waist — what 
could be better ? ” But there was nothing directly offensive 
in his gaze, it was chiefly critical. To do the yachtsman 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


37 


justice the thought of his own young daughter stood between 
him and the stream of rosy youth that passed season after 
season before his admiring eyes. Also, he was ordinarily the 
tempted and not the tempter; the successive beauties who 
were the recipients of his favours were mature and generally 
not opulent. His native generosity, great good-nature, and 
a certain sort of chivalry made him an easy prey to women, 
while to men he stood as the embodiment of rigid business 
honour and manly force. And “ StockwelTs harem ” seemed 
incompatible with StockwelFs princely charities and clerical 
friendships. How hardly shall they that have riches walk a 
consistent path on earth, let alone enter into the kingdom of 
heaven ! 

Presently the hostess, at whose right he sat, engaged his 
attention gently, and he turned away from the consideration 
of Leonora’s fine points, and leaning on the table talked with 
her and the man on her left. Leonora, thus released, began 
to wonder if Mr. Paul Fairfax would talk again to her. She 
had not the courage to speak first, and it really did not seem 
her part. Presently the restless little blonde beyond relin- 
quished him for a moment and turned to the man at her 
right. There was an awkward pause, during which Leonora 
was saying to herself that dinners were not as amusing as 
she had fancied they would be, when in a halting way he 
said: 

“ Mrs. Pelletreau tells me you have not lived in America. 
Ho you think you shall like it ? ” 

I don’t know. Everybody asks me. Ho you think I 
shall?” 

I — I don’t know what you would be likely to like,” he 
returned with embarrassment. 

That put Leonora at her ease; it was quite enough that 
one of them should be rattled. 

“ NTo, of course not — oh, I hope I shall. I must, you see. 
I have come home to live.” 

Well, having to doesn’t always make you like things ; do 
you think it does ? ” 

“ Oh, in a way it does. It helps, you know.” 

Yes, if you are that kind, I suppose it does.” 


38 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


These skeleton sentences did not disedify Leonora. She 
knew exactly what he meant. 

I am going to try,” she resumed after a moment^s 
silence. It is all so new to me though, all this sort of 
thing,” indicating the table with a little motion of her hand. 

I have spent my life in a convent where the table wasn’t 
wider than that, and where the rolls were piled up on plates 
just so far apart, and where we had napkin-rings for our 
napkins, and carafes and glasses at our places. It is such a 
change, you see. And we wore woollen dresses always, blue 
for every day and white for fHe days. Everybody’s clothes 
here seem marvels. And I’m always wondering what will be 
the next surprise.” 

“ Convents are dreadful places to send girls to, I should 
think,” he said with a sort of contraction of the forehead. 

Oh, no ! ” cried Leonora with earnestness. “ Don’t have 
that idea. They are happy places. Children love them. I 
would go back to-morrow.” 

“ Then it’s all the worse,” he said shortly, if it makes 
girls want to lead such an unnatural life always.” 

“ Oh, I don’t mean that,” said Leonora with a sigh. “ I 
haven’t got a vocation. I don’t want to be a nun. But I 
would like to be back there because I love them, and because 
it seems like home.’ 

“ That was because you hadn’t any home, I suppose.” 

There were plenty of girls who had homes who loved it 
and who wanted to stay,” she answered. 

There was another pause. Then she carried the war into 
Africa and asked him if he had always lived in America, and 
if he liked it. He said he hadn’t lived in America for sev- 
eral years. He had come now for good, though — his holiday 
was over. Like her, he had made up his mind to like it, 
and he hoped he should. There was a great deal to like in 
America: it gave a man a great chance, etc. 

Leonora did not have any further opportunity to watch 
her neighbours, for she and Mr. Paul Fairfax talked till the 
end of the dinner. She realised that she used about twenty- 
five words to his one, but as long as they understood each 
other it did not matter. There was no allusion made on 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


39 


either side to the unfortunate circumstances in which they 
had first met, neither was there much autobiography. 

When the women left the men at the table and went into 
the drawing-room the agitated and unhappy-looking woman 
whom Leonora had been watching earlier hurried to Mrs. 
Pelletreau and said in a forced way : 

“You’ll have to excuse me, I must go to my room. I 
have some letters that must be written. You won’t mind, I 
know ? ” 

Her hostess gave her assurance that she should not, told 
her about the hours of the post, and hoped she would find 
everything in her desk. 

When the last swish of her long evening dress disap- 
peared off the landing-place, and the quick shutting of a door 
told that the poor thing was safe from pursuing eyes, Belinda 
and Mrs. Endicott-Bangs, the pale, thin blonde, rushed to Mrs. 
Pelletreau and stormed her with questions: Was it true that 
it was all in the evening papers? Did Pepita know it her- 
self ? What would happen ? Oh, heavens, what would 
happen ? 

The hostess put her hands before her eyes with a gesture 
of light despair, if one may so say; her soft exclamations 
were those of amused pity and of gentle perplexity. The 
gentle perplexity seemed the more genuine of the emotions 
she showed. 

“ If it only had not all come out while she was in my 
house,” she murmured. 

“ Then it is in the paper ! ” cried Belinda 

“ Yes, yes, it is,” she answered, taking her hands from her 
face. “ Sancton Stockwell brought it to me.” 

“ Where — where is it ? Can’t we see it ? Please ! ” Mrs. 
Pelletreau hesitated, then walked across to a drawer in a 
little table 

“ Only if you will get through it before the men come in 
— ^they must not see you with it. I promised him not.” 

They all stood in a group under a lamp. Mrs. Pelletreau 
had placed her hand on Leonora’s arm to steady herself in 
the supposed crisis of agitation. The two others, with eager 
necks craned over the paper, stood as close to them as was 


40 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


possible. Belinda, with clear enunciation and sharp empha- 
sis, read out the hideous headlines : 

DIVORCE PRIVATELY GRANTED 

William Busted Obtains Decree of Absolute Divorce 
From His Wife Pepita 
Together With Custody of Children 

AN OPEN SECRET THAT REGINALD 
BURRALL, WELL-KNOWN CLUBMAN, 

IS NAMED AS CO-RESPONDENT 

Cheek by jowl in the parallel column, in equally strenuous 
type, stood these words: 

SOCIETY HOLDS ITS BREATH 

ENGAGEMENT IS ANNOUNCED OF 
MISS LUCY BENT 
TO MR. REGINALD BURRALL 

Belinda’s gloating over it, the way she caught her breath 
between the most bald and barefaced statements as if they 
stirred her to her dramatic depths, made Leonora’s flesh 
creep. And it was about this woman, whom ten minutes be- 
fore they had been looking at, talking to. And if there had 
been even a little note of pity, even a faint chill of horror, 
even a momentary sickening at the thought of so near a ruin ! 
But no, it was all eager curiosity; keen, almost boisterous, 
amusement. Belinda, at the worst parts, would clutch her 
dress and cry, Listen ! ” Mrs. Endicott-Bangs would emit 
little sounds of sharp derision and contempt. Mrs. Pelle- 
treau would say, Poor silly thing ! ” and laugh softly, and 
look round anxiously lest the men should be coming in from 
the dining-room. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


41 


When the paper had been read and re-read, she took it 
from Belinda and locked it into a drawer, and they all sat 
down in a knot in one corner of the room. 

“Well,” said Belinda, drawing a long breath, “it’s the 
worst thing I ever heard. No wonder she was biting her 
lips and looking as if she was going to cry, and shaking like 
a reed all through dinner! You would have thought the end 
of the world had come 1 ” 

“ Well, it has come for her,” said Mrs. Endicott-Bangs 
between her teeth. “ She is a fool ; I always knew she was a 
fool.” 

“ She has made awful mistakes — awful ones. She never 
had the least tact, the least discretion,” mused Mrs. Pelle- 
treau, shaking her head. 

“ And she was so confident,” said Belinda. “ She thought 
she was going to do the Melbum act and ride roughshod over 
prejudices, and carry everything before her. But they are 
not Melbums. Oh, she’s done for herself; she’s done for 
herself ! ” and Belinda’s eyes snapped. She looked almost 
handsome, animated by the scandal, and by her nearness to 
a sister’s downfall. 

The two elder women were less jubilant. Mrs. Pelle- 
treau’s life had been full of delicate situations, and she had 
had some moments of keen anxiety at times; but tact was 
on a plane with virtue in her creed; she had reason, such 
good reason, to believe in the potency of tact. Mrs. Endi- 
cott-Bangs was herself a recent divorcee. She had lived 
over a volcano for many a moon, but she had been defiant and 
fii-m, had carried her head high and had escaped defeat, but 
more by good luck than good management. At the moment 
when things had looked blackest for her, her husband had 
involuntarily earned her eternal gratitude by developing an 
infatuation for a pretty actress. This had enabled her to . 
appear triumphantly as plaintiff and not defendant in the 
divorce courts. He was an easy fool and very rich, and there 
had been little trouble about the alimony, which was both 
abundant and well secured, but the strain had told upon her 
health and temper somewhat. She was acrimonious in her 
comments on the story they had just read, but she was not 


42 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


enjoying it. It remained for happy, innocent girlhood, repre- 
sented by Belinda, to find unalloyed pleasure in the tale. 

As for Leonora, startled at first, then awestruck, then 
sickened, she sat with her eyes down, struggling with strange 
emotions. Oh, it could not be — she had not been so near a 
woman who could — ^who could — Just the width of that daz- 
zling table — only across that mist of flowers — that glitter of 
silver — she who loved God and prayed to Him — and that 
other 

The story they had listened to was substantially correct. 
This woman whom they had watched hurry up the broad 
staircase twenty minutes before and shut herself in her room 
to write her letters and hide her shame, had for a year and a 
half been notoriously intimate with a young, handsome, and 
rich man, unmarried, idle, and pleasure-loving. It was so usual 
a development of the set in which they both lived that the 
scandal attached to it did not damage materially the position 
of either. But the injured husband did not take it so lightly. 
There were two little children, and their fair and innocent 
faces goaded him to action. The divorce was got with- 
out difficulty, and with the privacy that is one of the luxuries 
of wealth. The decree was published yesterday — and to-day 
the announcement of the engagement of the co-respondent, 
Bex Burrall, to a young and charming girl, the most admired 
debutante of the winter just passed. 

“ Bm afraid the men will be down on Rex,” said Mrs. 
Pelletreau. ‘‘He might have waited awhile; it is a little 
hard on her.” 

“I’ve always thought him a mean wretch,” said Mrs. 
Endicott-Bangs sharply. 

“ Melburns don’t grow on every bush,” cried Belinda. 
“ Horrid as all that business was, I thought Melburn was 
perfectly splendid — now didn’t you?” 

The two others gave a qualified and cautious assent to her 
praise, they were both of them walking on thin ice. 

“ But this — this,” went on Belinda irrepressibly expan- 
sive, “ this is so dramatic, so sensational, the two things com- 
ing out so at once ! What can she do — how can she hold up 
her head ? ” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


43 


“ She can’t hold it up, she’ll have to take it out of the 
way. Oh, what a fool she’s made of herself,” said Mrs. 
Endicott-Bangs with acrimony. 

“ She’s madly in love with him, isn’t she ? ” asked Be- 
linda. 

“ There isn’t any doubt about it, I’m afraid,” said Mrs. 
Pelletreau sadly. 

“ The more fool she,” muttered the divorcee. 

What strange luck some girls have,” mused Belinda Mer- 
ritt, smoothing out the ribbons of her dress. “ Lucy Bent isn’t 
extraordinarily pretty, but she has been such a success all 
winter they say she could have married almost anybody, 
though her family haven’t any money and aren’t much in the 
way of position. And now she steps into the best fortune in 
the market. He’s the handsomest man in Hew York, and all 
the men like him. He’s very popular.” 

“ I don’t know,” said Mrs. Pelletreau thoughtfully. I 
don’t think the men are crazy about him ; and this — this will 
be against him. He ought to have waited a little, you know, 
just a few months; he could have gone abroad till it had 
blown over. The Bents would have been sure to have fol- 
lowed him if he had gone, and he could have offered himself 
there, and it could have been announced from there, and it 
would not have been — so — so very bad for Pepita.” 

Oh, now, dear Mrs. Pelletreau ! ” cried Belinda sink- 
ing on one knee before her, and looking in her face while 
she fingered absently the fiowers Mrs. Pelletreau wore on her 
dress. “Isn’t it because you have been talking to Sancton 
Stockwell? Do you think all the men feel that way? I’d 
like to take a caucus of the Union, or the Knickerbocker, or 
the Metropolitan ! He is so fine and noble and chivalrous, I 
don’t know anybody like him, but I don’t believe all the club 
men look at it as he does. He spoils you for other men; now 
confess, dear Mrs. Pelletreau, doesn’t he ? ” 

A faint flush came into the older woman’s face, and she 
did not lift her eyes. “ He certainly is never severe in his 
judgment of women,” she said. 

“ There is nobody like him,” went on Belinda, warming 
with her subject, “ so generous, so whole-souled, so loyal. 


44 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Oh, I’ve just been thinking to-night how you are to be envied 
having such a man as that for your — ^your — friend.” 

The ice was crackling now, and Belinda was frightened 
at her indiscretion and Mrs. Endicott-Bangs gave a dry little 
cough and began to talk of Mrs. Bent and of her clever win- 
ter’s work. 

I supppse she’s the best-pleased woman in America to- 
night,” she said. “ She’s shown cleverness and perseverance 
and she deserves her success.” 

“ Yes,” said Mrs. Pelletreau, I like Mrs. Bent, she under- 
stands herself thoroughly. And she’s brought Lucy up well. 
I don’t know anybody who has better ideas about girls than 
Mrs. Bent has. Lucy is a charming girl.” 

“And yet, all the same,” said Belinda slowly, “I can’t 
help feeling, if I were in Lucy Bent’s place, all this sort of 
mess — you know — would have spoiled things for me — just at 
first, at least.” 

“ Oh, come now, Belinda, that’s spiteful ! ” cried Mrs. 
Endicott-Bangs. “You know you would have jumped at 
him.” 

“ Jumped at him ! ” exclaimed Belinda, shamed out of 
her momentary weakness. “ Why, of course I should have 
jumped at him, swallowed him whole, choked him down with- 
out asking any questions. I’m not such a hypocrite as to 
say I shouldn’t. Only I will maintain a girl would rather 
have a man who, all things being equal, hadn’t had such an 
affair as this on his hands for the past two years.” 

“ Nonsense !” exclaimed Mrs. Endicott-Bangs. “You 
know perfectly well there isn’t a man you meet who hasn’t 
had as bad, or worse, in his life.” 

“ I know it perfectly well,” returned Belinda, piqued at 
having her knowledge of life impugned. “ Only, one might 
have a choice about the way the little scandal got before the 
public. I should rather it did not come out in the evening 
paper along with the announcement of the engagement.” 

“ Oh, then,” cried Mrs. Endicott-Bangs, “ it’s only the 
opinion of the world, not the ‘ heart’s disgrace,’ that bothers 
you ! ” 

“ How old are the children ? And are they hoys or girls ? ” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


45 


asked Mrs. Pelletreau, who was not following what they 
said. 

“ Three and five, somebody told me ; and they are both 
girls,” returned Belinda, getting up from the floor where she 
had been kneeling beside Mrs. Pelletreau. “ I saw them only 
the other day in town at Slater’s, where their nurse was get- 
ting them fitted with a lot of little shoes. They are the pret- 
tiest children I ever saw, ever in my life. And they say the 
mother doesn’t care one straw about them since this infatu- 
ation — not one straw. She threw them away without a 
qualm when she fancied Bex was going to marry her, and 
now ” 

“Now she’s fallen between two stools, and it serves her 
right for believing in that man. Any fool could have told 
her how she would come out.” 

“ And isn’t there any fool to tell Lucy Bent how she will 
come out ? ” asked Belinda pertly. 

“ Oh, that’s altogether another matter,” returned Mrs. 
Endicott-Bangs, getting up and readjusting a hairpin at the 
glass. “ Matrimony sobers a man in a certain way. And Bex 
is range; depend upon it, after this he means to be respecta- 
ble. And then, she’s got all that’s any good, after all. If she 
behaves herself, he can’t take the name away from her, nor 
the money nor the position. Oh, she’s all right! I admire. 
Lucy Bent; I approve her.” 

There was a sound across the hall as of chairs being 
pushed back ; the three women were “ at attention ” in an 
instant, and had changed their attitudes. 

“ Listen,” said Mrs. Pelletreau impressively as they moved 
across the floor beside her; “not one word, remember. I 
promised him. You know you have not seen the paper.” 

They pledged themselves to silence as the dining-room 
door opened, and the men crossed the hall and entered the 
room. Leonora meanwhile had not changed her position, but 
sat a little out of the lamplight in the comer of a high colo- 
nial sofa which shielded her somewhat. Her eyes were fixed 
on the group beyond her in the middle of the room. As the 
five men filed in there was at first something a little strained 
and stiff about them. Their doyen, Sancton Stockwell, for a 
4 


46 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


moment peered about and said nonchalantly : “ What a small 
party ! Where are you all ? ” 

“ Pepita had some letters to write, she has gone up to her 
room,” said Mrs. Pelletreau. 

Then he gave a low laugh and said, “ Well, I’ve no doubt 
you’ve had it all out. I don’t believe you kept your promise.” 

“We made her break it,” cried Belinda, starting to his 
side. “We tormented her! It wasn’t her fault.” 

Then they all closed up in a compact group; no one sat 
down. Leonora could not hear what they said, but she 
could hear the low laugh that followed some of the inaudible 
jests. She could see the animation of every face, the eager- 
ness of every gesture. It was an atmosphere of gloating 
satisfaction, of something too merry for malice and too con- 
temptuous for pity. Ever and again Mrs. Pelletreau uttered 
a faint warning and moved toward the door and looked 
cautiously out into the hall, and then came back, not to lose 
a word of what was being said. There was a gleaming life 
in her gray eyes that made Sancton Stockwell more than once 
look at her with admiration; he thought it was just what 
she needed; it made her look ten years younger. As for 
Mrs. Endicott-Bangs there was a bright spot in each pale 
cheek, and her sharp little darts of wit enchanted all the 
men and reminded them of what she was before she was 
divorced. And Belinda — Belinda on this wave was rising 
into notice. In the somewhat jaded set in which they lived 
such events perhaps were needed to bring out the best in 
every one. More than one glance told her that she had the 
house with her. She dared, and dared, and dared — and from 
that hour her place was made in Meadowburn. 

Somewhat on the outskirts of the group, Paul Fairfax 
moved a little restlessly. He did not join in the talk, and 
finally, a good while after he had caught sight of Leonora 
on her fortified sofa, he went over toward her and, not 
without awkwardness, said something very stupid and irrele- 
vant about the polo to-morrow, of which she knew nothing 
and of which, naturally, she could not talk. She was look- 
ing very distressed and pale, which, oddly, seemed to put him 
more at his ease. He brought a chair and sat down beside 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


47 


her and undertook to tell her which were the best players in 
the neighbourhood, and something about the grounds and the 
ponies. He made a sort of added defence for her, above and 
beyond the sofa, and he looked a little anxious and as if he 
did not want her to hear the talk that went on in the group 
which had now shifted its position to the hearth-rug, where 
in the chimney a light woodfire had been started. She had 
got a little reassured and over her agitation and was even 
entering somewhat into an understanding of the game he 
was describing when Sancton Stockwell moved back from the 
fire, and as if he were dismissing the subject of the scandal 
asked very audibly: 

And where is our charming ingenue? 

Then Belinda exclaimed in a voice not inaudible either: 

“ Oh, d has les ingenues and everybody laughed. 

The colour started into Leonora’s face, and Paul Fairfax 
looked a little as he did when he kicked over the campchair 
on the deck of the Touraine. The great man, however, came 
over to look up his charming ingenue whom the charms of 
scandal had made him hitherto forget. He sat down beside 
her, and in his big, beneficent way talked to her a good while. 
She felt a little reassured, but there were still things around 
her that were not reassuring. The other men came up and 
talked to her. Two of them were not young at all; one 
was — and handsome and well-built. He had, however, been 
drinking too much, as was his unfortunate habit, and he 
came quite near to her and frightened her with his man- 
ner of looking into her eyes. This both Stockwell and Paul 
objected to with alacrity. Paul frowned angrily at him and 
was about to say something forcible when Stockwell got 
up and ordered him off as if he had been a schoolboy, 
and he obeyed. Sancton Stockwell was such a power by 
reason of his mental and moneyed superiority and his 
great kindness of nature that the younger men were apt to 
take from him what they would not have taken from any 
one else. 

Harry is a good fellow,” he said, resuming his seat ; 
but he’s on the way to be a perfect sot.” With this remark 
he seemed to dismiss the trivial incident from his mind and 


48 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


resumed the sentence which had been hanging broken off 
since he found Harry ogling Leonora. 

Harry went over to Belinda ; she seemed to give him some 
sisterly advice, and they went and sat down in a corner for 
the rest of the evening. She did not seem to mind his leer- 
ing eyes, nor his hot breath, nor his inclination to take hold 
of her hand. She was broad-minded, and though only nine- 
teen had made many decisions about many things. 

The evening came to an end by the departure of Sancton 
Stockwell, who was going back to his yacht. The other men 
were staying in the house. He asked all the party to come 
to a twelve o’clock breakfast with him next morning on 
his yacht, after which they would drive over to polo. The 
invitation apparently gave them all great pleasure, as, in 
fact, everything else he did or said seemed to do. 


CHAPTEK IV 


W HEIV Leonora was in her room she tried to quiet 
herself and to see if she could find any excuse 
for the people who had outraged every sentiment 
in her heart so grossly. She said to herself she must not 
judge hastily. They were her father’s friends; she knew 
nothing of his world nor of its principles. She would wait 
and be impartial, and remember that she did not know their 
temptations nor their victories. She tried to be very calm 
and not let her maid see her perturbation. When the maid 
had gone, she resolutely said her prayers, notwithstanding 
great distraction. 

Am I going to be like this all the time ? ” she said to 
herself, walking up and down the room. “Have I got to 
spend my life among people like these ? ” 

She remembered, as she looked at her pretty gown, which 
the maid had folded and laid upon the sofa, her happiness 
as she went down the stairs that evening and looked at her- 
self in the glass on the landing-place. “To put on nice 
clothes for them” she thought contemptuously,./* to talk to 
them and to hear them talk about people, and to know how 
cruel and how coarse and how vulgar they can be! Oh, it 
is insupportable! This can’t be society — this can’t be what 
my father wants me to get used to.” 

She could not pacify herself enough to go to bed, but 
with her wrapper on and her hair falling in a long braid 
down her back, she sat by the window for an hour and 
watched the fitful gusty wind bend the trees near by. She 
had heard the men go upstairs long before, Harry stumbling 
and muttering as they helped him along. It was very late ; 
she ought to go to bed. Notwithstanding, she sat still and 

49 


50 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


gazed out of the window and asked herself questions. Would 
it be her duty to spend her life among such as these; would 
her father ask it of her if he knew just how the women 
talked to her, just how the men looked at her? And was 
this the world that she had pitied the nuns for having to 
give up? 

The candles on the dressing-table were getting low in 
their sockets; yes, she must go to bed. She wound her 
watch and put it on the table by her, she put her chapelet 
under the pillow and untied the ribbons of her dressing- 
gown. 

At which instant there came a quick and agitated rap 
on her door. She started forward and unlocked it hurriedly. 

“ Come quick, come quick ! ” cried a woman who stood 
there. 

What is it ? ” asked Leonora, trembling. 

Oh, I thought it was Mrs. Pelletreau’s room ! ” said the 
woman, catching sight of Leonora ; “ but come quick ; go in 
and stay with her while I look for Mrs. Pelletreau.” And 
not waiting for a word, she hurried forward to a room be- 
yond Leonora’s, whence moans proceeded. She pushed Leo- 
nora inside the door, and ran on down the corridor in a 
dazed way to look for Mrs. Pelletreau. 

The room into which Leonora had been thrust bore marks 
of hurried packing; upon the bed were dresses folded, and 
the tray of the trunk was on the floor. The sofa was near 
the window, and on it lay the poor woman of whose story 
the papers had been full and of whom Leonora had thought 
with fright and shame. 

She had not heard Leonora come in; she lay face down 
on the pillow and shook with strong hysterics. “ Oh, if I 
could die ! Oh, if I dared — if I only dared ! ” she cried out 
through her sobs. 

A great revolution of feeling came over Leonora, her 
fright and shame melted into pity. She had never seen 
any one in hysterics before, and she exaggerated the danger 
of it. Certainly she could not exaggerate the suffering. 
Instantly the maid came back from summoning Mrs. Pelle- 
treau. She was a Swede, very pretty and placid generally. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


51 


but by all this turmoil thrown into a state of consternation, 
and not very amiable withal. 

Take this,” she said with a little harshness; ^^take this 
to quiet you.” 

The poor writhing creature on the sofa struck away the 
glass without even looking at it. The maid gave a cry of 
dismay, for the mixture, whatever it was, had gone over all 
the front of her best dress, and she would do nothing till 
she had wiped it off. 

“Mrs. Pelletreau is coming; she will say you must take 
it, or something else,” said the maid as, flushed and angry, 
she rubbed the spots on her dress. 

“ Mrs. Pelletreau ! ” cried the sufferer, starting up on her 
elbow and pushing her tossed hair away from her face. “ I 
will not see her ! How dared you call her ! ” 

The sudden fright had got the hysterics under momen- 
tary control; though her breast was heaving and her hands 
shaking, she sat up and twisted her hair into a knot. Catch- 
ing sight of Leonora standing irresolute by the door, she 
said with passion to the maid : “ How dared you rouse the 
house because I had a headache? You are insupportable 
and a fool ! ” 

The maid muttered something, and Leonora came for- 
ward, saying the girl had made a mistake, and had called 
her instead of Mrs. Pelletreau. Mrs. Pelletreau at that mo- 
ment came in at the door, looking tired and faded and fifteen 
years older than she looked when she was dressed. Pepita 
came to herself sharply when she caught sight of her hostess. 

“ That stupid Hilda,” she said, pulling her dressing- 
gown about her, “has evidently never seen anybody with a 
headache before ! She gives me too much bromide, to begin 
with, and then goes and wakes up the house when I don’t 
go to sleep ! ” 

Mrs. Pelletreau was soothing and gentle; her guest got 
herself better in hand with every word. Leonora felt she 
had been dreaming when she thought of the wild paroxysm 
she had witnessed. What did it all mean? There was a 
great deal of mixing of medicine and of soothing talk on 
Mrs. Pelletreau’s part, and of sharp parrying on the part of 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


52 

the other. To Leonora it seemed that the poor thing’s face 
was growing harder and her eyes fiercer every moment, while 
her voice steadied itself more and more and her brain seemed 
to work better. She gave in to all the recommendations and 
doses prescribed, and promised to go at once to bed after 
Hilda had cleared it of the dresses that littered it. 

“ There was something I wanted at the bottom of my 
trunk,” she explained, seeing that Mrs. Pelletreau had no- 
ticed the confusion that reigned. Hilda, put everything 
away, and then go to bed yourself.” 

Mrs. Pelletreau yawned behind her hand, and Hilda 
busied herself with arranging the bed, and her mistress said 
tentatively: ^‘1 wanted to send Hilda into town with my 
Nile green gown to the dressmaker. Would there be any 
way for her to go in the morning ? ” 

The wagonette was going in to the 6.45 train for the 
plumber, if that wouldn’t be too early for her? It would 
not ; everything was settled in a moment’s time ; Mrs. Pelle- 
treau, with more soothing words, said good-night, and led 
Leonora away with her. 

Leonora sat down on the foot of her bed, filled with a 
strange uneasiness. The strained, tortured face haunted 
her, the uimatural • sudden self-control puzzled her. The 
house was profoundly still. She could hear distinctly the 
sounds from the next room — quick motions, the dropping of 
trays into the trunk, the snapping of the key. And then, 
soon, she heard Hilda leave the room, and heard her steps 
echo down the corridor toward the quarter where the ser- 
vants slept, and a door shut there ; and then all was still. 

She could not lie down, she stood motionless and listened 
breathlessly; then she walked softly across the fioor to the 
window nearest Pepita’s room, which was the first in a 
wing that stood back six feet or so from the front of the 
house. The open window at which she stood was at an 
angle from this room, and almost looked into it. The cur- 
tains were down; she could not see anything distinctly, but 
she could make out the reflection of some one moving about 
within. Though the room was only on the second floor, it 
was made to seem much higher by a deep court or area. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


53 


which was about ten feet wide, faced with a stone coping. 
When the moon came out she could see that this area was 
a deep tank of rain water, sometimes closed, but sometimes, 
as to-night, opened to the air. The great wooden shutters 
were turned back against the wall of the house. For a mo- 
ment or two she gazed down into the deep black pool; then 
the moon went under a heavy cloud, and she turned away 
with a sort of shiver as the darkness blotted out all below. 
The only light left was in the windows of Pepita’s room. 

A half-hour, perhaps less, had passed, when she detected 
faint sounds of movement in the next room, where all, up 
to that moment, had been absolutely silent; and then after 
a while her ear caught the smothered opening of a window. 
It was slowly and very softly done; why should it be so 
softly opened ? Perhaps the poor woman had been ashamed 
of having roused them all before; she could not sleep, she 
wanted air, and she dreaded being spied upon again. Poor 
soul! Leonora’s heart yearned with pity for her. She was 
ashamed of spying on her any more — but — ^but — the expres- 
sion of her eyes had frightened her. She stole to the door 
and opened it noiselessly, and with breathless quickness ran 
to the door of the next room and listened with intentness, 
scarcely breathing. An irrepressible impulse made her turn 
the latch and press against it till it opened. She smothered 
a cry at what she saw. 

The window was a French casement window, opening 
back like a door. Upon the broad sill, some three feet from 
the floor, stood the unhappy woman, poised to leap; her 
hand was on the window-frame, both doors of which were 
opened wide. The night wind was blowing in strong; her 
long white draperies were fluttering into the room; she was 
bending outward, looking down. That was the reason that 
she did not hear the door pushed open; another moment 
and it would have been too late. Leonora sprang to her 
and threw her strong young arms around her. The woman 
gave a cry and struggled fiercely for an instant. The girl 
had never tried her strength before, but it must have been 
considerable, though the shock and surprise had put the 
other at a disadvantage. 


54 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Leonora was panting as she drew her back into the room. 

You would have fallen,” she said between deep breaths, 
with an instinct of dissimulation to save her from the shame. 
“You were most imprudent; come and lie down,” and she ^ 
drew her to the sofa and pushed her down upon it, kneeling 
by her and stretching one arm across her as she lay. The 
wretched woman was gasping and her eyes had a wild, 
strange, wide-open look, but she did not resist, and lay quite 
still. 

“ Your hands are cold,” said Leonora, rubbing one with 
her own unoccupied one. Then she lifted it up and held it 
against her cheek and tried to warm it, and by and by she 
kissed it, and leaning forward kissed the face of the poor 
stained sinner whom she was holding down. A passion of 
pity filled her heart. At the caress the prostrate woman 
gave a sort of shuddering start, the tension of her muscles 
gave way a little; from panting she began to shiver, and in 
a moment strong chills were shaking her. Leonora did not 
dare to take away the arm that she had stretched across 
her body, not knowing what she might do if she were free; 
but with her disengaged hand she pulled toward her a light 
blanket that hung upon a chair near, and put it over her 
and tucked it in with quickness. 

“ You are so cold, so cold,” she kept saying to her. 

The strong night wind was blowing in at the open case- 
ment, but she did not dare to leave the place for a moment 
to go and shut it. Inexperienced as she was, she had the 
instinct to try to bring back the commonplace and to re- 
store its interrupted rule. The tremendous crisis that her 
companion had come up to must be passed over, and they 
must descend the slope into the every-day, if ever so little, 
before they would be safe. Leonora had not the least idea, 
from moment to moment, what she ought to say; every 
nerve was at its greatest tension; her brain seemed to her 
not to work. She kept saying over and over to Heaven : “ I 
don’t know what to do — don’t let me go wrong; just show 
me, show me, so I can’t do her any harm!” Once, when 
her anxiety was at its keenest as she watched the fierce fire 
in the eyes beneath her, she said, almost audibly : “ Kemem- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


55 


ber it will not be my fault — how can I know what I ought 
to say ? ” All through the long struggle she was conscious 
of being the instrument, not the author, of what she said 
and did. Before she spoke she did not know what she was 
going to say ; after she had spoken she could see it had been 
right. 

She knelt beside her for what seemed a long, long time, 
smoothing back her hair, warming her hands, folding the 
blanket closer round her shoulders, talking to her as though 
nothing were abnormal in the state of things. The dread- 
ful look that had frightened Leonora gradually went out of 
her eyes, but an expression of awful suffering came into 
them. Suddenly she threw her hands out and then clasped 
them to her head and moaned: 

“ Oh, why did you stop me, why did you stop me ! It 
would have been all over by now ! ” 

It wouldn’t have been all over,” said Leonora ; it 
would have been just beginning.” 

“No,- no; death ends things that nothing else will. Oh, 
I cannot live — nobody ought to ask me to live ! ” She sat 
up and pushed the blanket away from her; then she tried 
to rise, as if pursued by something. “ You mustn’t stop 
me — I’ve got to get out of all this — if you knew all, you’d 
know I had to get away from everything — there isn’t any- 
thing else that I can do ! ” 

“ Listen ! ” said Leonora, winding her arms around her 
and keeping her on the sofa. “ Listen, I have got some- 
thing to say to you.” And when she uttered the words she 
didn’t know what she was going to say to her, but she was 
praying in terror that she might say what was right. “ You 
don’t think I know all,” she went on in a slow way, “ but I 
believe I do know all. And I know, besides, what maybe 
you don’t know. I know God is very sorry for you, and 
doesn’t mean to let you lose your soul.” 

“ Oh, if I haven’t lost it now ! It never can be any more 
lost than it is now. Let me go — let me get up.” She 
moaned and struggled, but in a fainter way. 

“You don’t realise what you say,” said Leonora, still 
kneeling by her and holding her down. “ You haven’t lost 


56 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


it. Nobody can take it from you till you throw it away 
yourself — as you were going to do just now when I came 
in. After that it would be lost. Don’t you see — don’t 
you see ? ” 

Leonora’s companion gave a shudder and turned away 
from her. I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” she said. 
“ Don’t talk about it to me, but let me get up and go away 
from here — from all these hideous people — from everything 
that I ever knew or saw before in all my life.” 

^‘Yes,” said Leonora, catching her breath — ‘^yes, I can 
see you ought to go away; I will help you to go; but first 
you must promise me you won’t do anything — anything like 
what you tried to do just now.” 

Why should I promise you ? ” she said, beating her hand 
up and down upon the sofa, as she turned her head away in 
anguish. “ Why can’t I do what will stop the pain and 
make an end of it all for ever ? ” 

“ But it won’t make an end of it all for ever. If it’s bad 
now, it will be worse after you’ve done it — worse, ever so 
much worse.” 

Dogma has a certain power. Leonora knew what she 
believed about God and the future life, and her companion 
did not know what she believed about them. The rudiments 
of theology are as serviceable in some crises as the rudi- 
ments of geology, though much less insisted on in modem 
education. Leonora felt as certain about her companion’s 
danger as the masters of science feel about the stony facts 
of inanimate creation. The force of her convictions, the 
fixedness of her faith after a while produced their effect. 
“ The convinced convince.” That is one of the reasons why 
the followers of her creed slay their thousands where Protes- 
tants slay their hundreds. 

At last, amid sobs and reluctancies, her companion gave 
the promise she required. Then, relieved, she got up from 
her knees beside her. “You will never be sorry,” she said; 
“ I know you will keep your promise to me. We must begin 
to make our plans.” 

As a first step she closed the window, through which a 
gale had been blowing; she had not dared to leave her post 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


57 


to shut it. Then she lit fresh candles, for the old ones were 
spluttering their last, and she threw another blanket over 
the weeping woman on the sofa, and picked up some things 
lying on the floor. As she moved about the room, her com- 
panion, exhausted with emotion, looked at her dumbly and 
helplessly. After a little she pulled a low chair up to the 
sofa and sat down. 

Kow we must begin to make our plans,” she said again. 
Then the other began to weep again. 

“ There is nowhere I can go,” she said. “ I donT know 
any place where I can be safe from people seeing me. That 
is the one thing I want to do — never to see anybody again 
that knows.” 

“Haven’t you any relations, any very kind people that 
would take you in and shield you till — till you knew what 
was best — just for the moment, you know?” 

She shook her head, crying; the thought she had was 
that she was an outcast, and that outcasts had better drag 
themselves out of sight ; but she did not say so. “ I would 
go to Europe, but there are so many Americans there; you 
are coming up against people you know everywhere. And 
it is so lonesome over there, and at hotels they are so hard 
and want your money so. I shan’t have much, I suppose.” 
And then she put her hands before her face and said that 
there wasn’t any place on the face of God’s earth for her, 
and that she hoped in mercy she might die before the week 
was out. 

There was a long silence, broken at last by Leonora’s 
saying slowly : “ Should you mind going to — a convent ? ” 

Her companion winced as if she had been struck. “ A 
convent ! Oh, no, I couldn’t go to a convent ; they’re grim, 
dreadful places — it would be worse than anything!” she 
moaned. 

“ Because there,” went on Leonora, not noticing what 
she had said, “ there you wouldn’t need any money, or only 
the least little bit. And you wouldn’t see anybody that you’d 
ever seen before. And you would be taken care of if you 
were sick, and hidden if anybody tried to find you.” 

“ Oh, yes, but,” she returned, with a look of repugnance 


58 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


on her poor face all “blubbered with tears,” “but they 
would all preach at me and loathe me and tell me I was 
going* to be damned. And they are so narrow-minded and 
bigoted, and the stone floors are so cold, and there is such 
a smell of carbolic. You had better kill me, and done with 
it, before you send me to a convent.” And she began to 
cry again. 

“ Why, did you ever see a convent ? ” 

“ Yes, in Paris, once, near the Madeleine, where they 
taught poor children. Oh, I never shall forget that smell! 
The place was clean enough — but the carbolic, it sick- 
ened me ! ” 

“Well, I have lived twelve years in a convent, and I 
never smelled carbolic. And I liked to live there better than 
anywhere else, and I wish I were there this moment.” 

“ Oh, you were a child, and children can stand things, 
and they don’t know anything else ! But I — I have had ex- 
citement and amusement and pleasure all the time. O God! 
— pleasure — and what has it come to! Pve just lived as I 
liked to and gone from one thing to another. If I wanted 
a thing, I would have it. All the other women were just 
the same; and why has it fallen on me — ^why am I picked 
out — to be shamed — and killed ! ” 

“ What I was saying about the convent in Paris where 
I was,” went on Leonora thoughtfully, “ is that you could 
go there and be out of the way of everybody till you knew 
what you wanted to do. It is cheerful and pretty and has 
a big garden. And the nuns are lovely and happy and don’t 
pull a long face a bit. They went into the convent because 
they wanted to go, and they gave up everything, even to the 
last little bit of precious thing they had, just to be as poor 
as the poorest, and as near to what our Lord was as they 
could get. And I think it stands to reason that people that 
have done that must get a blessing and be happy, and make 
others happy, too. They love the children like mothers.” 

“ Yes,” said the other below her breath, “ they love inno- 
cent children — but I — I am not innocent,” and she raised 
her head with a deflant, passionate look, and the flush that 
rose to her face seemed to deepen the black of her eyes. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


59 


“ They would have a horror of me. And I — I should hate 
them. What do they know of life? What have they ever 
felt? Puny, imnatural, stunted things ” 

“ As you please,” said Leonora quietly. “ They didn’t 
seem so to me. And they have known and helped and com- 
forted so many like — like you — that they can’t be quite so 
ignorant as you think.” 

There was again a silence. 

“ They’d expect me to believe in all sorts of things I 
don’t believe in,” she went on after a while, with stormy 
insistence and resistance. 

They wouldn’t expect you to believe if you couldn’t 
believe,” returned Leonora. “ That’s your part of it. They 
can’t make you believe if you don’t want to. Catholics know 
better than that.” 

am a Catholic, though — if being baptised a Catholic 
when you are little makes you one,” she said. 

‘‘You a Catholic! ” exclaimed Leonora, starting. 

“ If being baptised makes me one.” 

“Why, yes, nothing can unmake it — nothing. You can’t 
escape from it, you can’t get rid of it! Were your people 
Catholics ? Did they bring you up to know your religion ? ” 

“ Oh, no ! ” she said. “ Anything else. They didn’t be- 
lieve in anything, as far as I can remember. Oh, no; I was 
brought up without such things ! ” 

“ Then who got you baptised ? ” asked Leonora doubt- 
fully. 

“My wet-nurse,” she said. “Her own baby died after 
she came to nurse me, and she got to love me as if I were 
her child. She must have been good and pious. I don’t 
remember her at all. She stayed a long time after I was 
weaned, because she was fond of me. And one day, I believe 
when I was about three, she put my plainest clothes on and 
took me to a church and had me baptised. The priest didn’t 
know I wasn’t her child — he wouldn’t have done it if he 
had thought I wasn’t.' And one of the servants suspected 
and told. And there was a dreadful row, and the poor thing 
was sent away, and even the priest was down on her. I 
think he was hard and mean ; he might have stood by her.” 


60 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“ Why, no,’^ said Leonora. It’s against the law of 
the Church. You can’t baptise children that won’t be 
brought up in the faith — it’s sacrilegious. But — go on — 
go on.” 

“ There was a dreadful row. My father and mother were 
as angry as if she had tried to kill me. There was a lot of 
it in the papers ; my father tried to prosecute them because 
they wouldn’t take my name off the parish register. But as 
she had put Josephine after my own name, I don’t see what 
difference it made.” 

“You’ve got a good patron,” murmured Leonora with 
gleaming eyes. “ But what next ? ” 

“ Oh, well, nothing — only it was always a thing that 
made my mother angry. I remember,” she went on mus- 
ingly, as if she were softened by going back into thoughts 
of the past, and as if the fierce strain of her mind were for 
the moment a little relaxed, “I remember sometimes, when 
I was six or seven, standing by my mother’s chair while she 
would tell the story to some visitor, and I understood every 
word and remembered all she said. She liked to talk about 
it always as long as she lived. And she said such things — 
about priests and Catholics ” 

“ Did it make you hate them, too ? ” asked Leonora. 

“No; it was strange it didn’t. Perhaps it was per- 
versity — I used to be a perverse child, but I always had a 
sort of queer interest in Catholic churches and in priests. 
I never saw any Catholics. After all that happened, we 
didn’t ever have any but Protestant servants at home — 
Swedes and English and Scotch, and one French Protestant. 
But when I was grown and we went to Europe, I used some- 
times to go into churches, and when nobody was looking I 
would go and kneel down at an altar. But,” she added 
naively, “ I didn’t know what to say.” 

Leonora stroked the hand she held. “ Poor thing ! ” she 
said, between laughing and crying. 

“ And it was that sort of thing,” she went on, “ that 
made me go into the convent near the Madeleine that time. 
But it smelled of carbolic so, I never went into another.” 

“ But while you were a little child did you never see 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


61 


anybody who was a Catholic and who would say anything 
to you ? ” 

“ Oh, never! You don’t know how my mother felt about 
it. My father was very angry at first, but he got over it, 
and made a joke of it. He used to call me his little Papist. 
I can hear him now, calling up the stairs when he came 
home from business : ^ Where’s my little Papist ? ’ Ah, dear, 
father was always good to me! If he had lived I shouldn’t 
be where I am now ! And my brother teased me, and never 
called me anything else, and the servants got it, too, and 
the butler would call up to the nurse, ‘ Bring the Papist 
down to her luncheon.’ And then it got to be Pay-pay, 
and then a French nurse came and called me Pepita, and 
it’s stuck to me ever since. See ! ” she added abruptly, pull- 
ing from her dress a small locket, and holding it up for 
Leonora to read the word “ Pepita ” engraved upon it. 

The locket seemed to bring her back sharply from child- 
ish retrospect. A dark frown contracted her forehead. She 
opened it and looked at a tiny folded slip of paper it con- 
tained, and stormy fury came into her eyes. She tried to 
pull the chain from her neck, but could not find the clasp. 

“Unfasten it,” she said huskily to Leonora, who bent 
over it and unfastened it, divining, as she caught sight of 
the word “ Bex ” upon the other side, what the emotion was 
that it had stirred. She lay back on the pillow of the sofa, 
clutching it in her hand and breathing hard as she stared 
at vacancy with desperate eyes. Leonora’s own were full of 
tears. After a long silence, she said, in a low voice: 

“ With all they did they couldn’t keep your saint’s name 
away from you. You’ve always been called Pepe and Pepita, 
and that’s short for Joseph and Josephine. And you know 
they couldn’t any more cheat you of the grace of your bap- 
tism, and it’s yours now and always. Don’t you see — can’t 
you feel — God and your ange gardien and St. Joseph have 
kept you and drawn you back from destruction — so many 
times perhaps — and this time surely, that I know. See! I 
want you to wear this,” and she unfastened from her neck 
a little chain with a crucifix attached and a tiny medal, 
which she kissed and then clasped around her companion’s 
5 


62 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


neck, who did not resist, nor yet assent. “ You will wear 
it, won’t you? And you will go to the convent.” 

don’t know,” she said. “I won’t promise. I should 
not know what to say to them. And they wouldn’t under- 
stand. Maybe they’d turn me off ” 

But they wouldn’t turn you off. They couldn’t, you 
know. You are a Catholic, and you have a right to go there. 
Every convent is God’s house, built only for Him, carried 
on only for Him, used only for His children. They couldn’t 
turn you away.” 

“ And Paris,” she moaned. “ Paris — where I was — with 
— where I was only two years ago ” 

“ If you don’t want to stay in Paris,” urged Leonora, 
you can go to the house in Andecy, where the sisters are 
sent sometimes in summer to rest. It is an old chateau 
and it stands in the midst of a great plain, and it is so still 
and so lonely, miles and miles away from any village. No- 
body comes there but a peasant in a cart twice a week to 
bring things to eat. There is ivy all over the old stone 
courts, and a tower with an old rusty bell that won’t ring 
any more; the only bells you hear are the bells on the cows 
and the goats and the sanctus bell in the chapel. And there 
are such lovely wild flowers all over the great wide plain, 
and there is always a soft wind and such pleasant sunshine, 
and such a stillness — only the birds twittering in the ivy, 
and sometimes the nuns singing in the old chapel. Oh, I 
loved Andecy; it was a great treat to go there! ” 

Poor Pepita had not looked at first as if she were listen- 
ing, with her eyes fixed on vacancy and with her locket 
tight-clutched in her strained hand, but something in the 
description of the lonely spot seemed to arrest her atten- 
tion. Her forehead contracted, she asked questions — how 
far it was from Paris, whether it was lived in all the year, 
whether any strangers ever came to it, whether telegrams 
and papers could get to it. 

Then a sudden light of decision came into her eyes. I 
will go,” she said. It will be next best to dying.” 

She pushed Leonora’s hand away and got up from the 
sofa and walked about the room with her brows knit in 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


63 


thought. Her brain was working with abnormal swiftness, 
and the strong energy of her character was bending itself 
to the accomplishment of her new-formed purpose. Leo- 
nora sat and watched her, wondering what would be evolved 
from this chaotic hour. 

Have you got any money ? ” she asked Leonora abruptly, 
pausing before her.- 

^^Not much,” said Leonora; ‘^but I can give you a 
check.” 

That, wouldn’t do. You must not be connected with 
it — it would give me away. Maybe I’ve got enough.” 

She caught up a small bag from the table and drew a 
chair to the light and emptied the contents of the bag upon 
her lap. There was a lot of loose change and a roll of bills. 
She counted them over. There was something more than 
four hundred dollars. 

“ I wish I had more,” she said thoughtfully. “ It would 
get me there easily if everything went right; but if it 
didn’t, and I needed something right away to hurry off 
somewhere ” 

I could get a check cashed to-morrow,” urged Leonora, 
to-morrow morning ” 

That wouldn’t be time enough,” she said, counting over 
the bills again with a quick movement. “ I am going away 
when the wagonette goes at 6.45. I am going to sail on 
the French boat that leaves at ten o’clock. I have it all 
planned out — don’t talk — don’t interrupt me ” 

Leonora looked on, amazed, while her companion flashed 
through the change that lay on her lap. 

“ Four hundred and thirty-seven dollars and ninety-three 
cents,” she said thoughtfully. “ I ought to have more to 
take. I wish I hadn’t paid Hilda yesterday, and those stupid 
bills. But I’ve got my diamonds, and I could turn them 
into money in a minute if I got safely over. Only, it’s 
always something to track you by. I wish I didn’t have to 
run that risk.” 

Her brow contracted as she slowly drew from her dress 
an envelope. Her bosom heaved and her face grew dark as 
she pulled out from it a check, which she looked at for a 


64 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


few moments. Then, with a slow movement, she tore it in 
three pieces and thrust it into an envelope which lay on 
the desk at which she was sitting, and blindly and with 
trembling hands she hunted among the papers for a pen 
and ink. 

“ The ink — get me some ink,” she said huskily, holding 
the paper tightly in her hand. Leonora found the inkstand 
and pens, which were on a table near. 

Her companion drew the inkstand to her, and with rapid 
hand wrote the name of Reginald Burrall across the face 
of the envelope, and an address, and then sealed it, with 
the candle pulled toward her and the wax dripping and spill- 
ing on the blotter. There was another moment of confused 
hunt for a stamp, and then the letter lay finished and ready 
for its destination. She looked at it for a moment, remem- 
bering all the guilty notes she had scrawled that address on, 
that she had smuggled to the post, that she had guarded 
from her husband’s sight, that were somewhere in the treach- 
erous hand of the man she had trusted — damning proofs of 
her hot passion and of her reckless folly. This was the last 
— the last — it was all over — this was the end — the shameful, 
mocking end. And bowing her head down on her arms 
upon the desk, she shook with a storm of sobs. 

It seemed as if the tempest would never spend itself. 
Leonora, with unspeakable pity, stood and watched her. It 
seemed impossible to let her go on so and not say a word. 

Don’t — don’t ! ” she said at last, almost inaudibly, laying 
her hand on Pepita’s shoulder. Pepita struck it away; with 
her two hands clasped across her forehead she lifted her 
head and turned from her. It seemed to Leonora that the 
evil spirit was rending the poor soul as he quit it. Such 
a look on a human face she had never seen before — malig- 
nant hate, despair, defiance, fighting with a passion that 
matched with them in strength. The time seemed longer 
than perhaps it really was. She dared not speak again. 

The sharp banging of one of the window-blinds, and the 
equally sharp bursting open of another, showed a sudden 
change of wind. The opened blinds revealed the pale light 
of the dawn. Pepita turned her head toward it, and seeing 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


65 


day was near, with a slow, unsteady motion got np and 
walked sullenly to the window. 

“ What time is it ? ” she said hoarsely, not turning her 
head to Leonora, but looking out. Leonora went to the 
dressing-table and took up the watch there. 

“ It is half -past three,” she answered. There was another 
silence. 

“ I want you to post this letter yourself,” she said, hand- 
ing it to Leonora without looking at it again. “ See that 
it goes to-morrow. Don’t trust it to anybody else. And — 
if any letter comes to me here, get hold of it some way. 
How long are you going to stay here ? ” 

“ Only till Tuesday,” said Leonora. “ But if anything 
comes, I will get possession of it and keep it or forward it.” 

Nothing may come,” she said, sitting down, as if spent 
with her emotion. “ But whatever you get hold of, of mine, 
here or anywhere, send it to — to your convent. Bemember, 
you are the only one in the world that knows. You have 
the only clew to me. You must not open your lips, no mat- 
ter what happens, no matter if I die. No one can ever know 
unless you tell.” 

“ You are sure you have money enough? ” asked Leonora 
faintly. 

She was beginning to be frightened at the irrevocable 
life that Pepita’s sudden decision had struck into her 
crudely thought-out scheme. All the difficulties of it began 
to push up their heads — money, modes of communication, 
assurance that the task she was putting before the nuns was 
possible to them. What would her father say to her mixing 
herself in such a matter? Had a girl of her age any right 
to judge or help or hinder in a case of such flagrant shame? 
And then all the confusing details. How could Pepita ever 
catch the steamer? How could she provide herself with 
comforts for the voyage in such a moment? What chance 
was there that she could get a cabin a half-hour before^ sail- 
ing? And if she should be ill? And if she should die on 
the voyage ? 

Leonora was only one among many whom generous im-- 
pulses mount on mettlesome steeds which carry them head- 


66 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


long into battles of difficulties, and unseat them pretty 
promptly when they get them there. She felt faint with 
apprehension, but she said to herself stoutly she had meant 
to do right; and she grasped for the bridle and struggled 
up to the saddle again, and did not lose it afterward, for all 
the gyrations of that undulating steed. 

The dawn in the sky seemed at last to startle Pepita 
into something like the energy she had shown before un- 
nerved by her burst of weeping. The breakdown had left 
her deadly pale, and she seemed to have a sickening faint- 
ness two or three times as she was bending over her trunk 
or picking something from the floor. 

“Let me help you,” Leonora said more than once; but 
she either got no notice or a shake of the head. 

“Youfll have to strap that,” said Pepita at last, sitting 
down. “ I can’t manage it — my hands shake.” 

Leonora knelt and strapped the bag. “ What about 
rugs?” she asked. “You’ll surely need them.” 

“ I am going to get them and an ulster as I pass 
through town.” 

“ But Hilda ? What will she think ? What will you do 
with her ? ” asked Leonora humbly. 

Then Pepita, with a touch of asperity, said: “I have 
arranged everything in my mind. You don’t know me, or 
you’d know I can carry out what I propose to do.” Then, as 
if she felt a twinge of shame at this boast and wished it to 
pass unnoticed, went slowly on: “We reach town at 8.15. I 
take a cab and have my trunk put on it. Then I send Hilda 
by the street car up to the Buckingham to engage rooms 
for me, and I tell her I have some errands that will keep 
me for a couple of hours. I give her two dollars — that will 
pay for her dinner; she will get tired of waiting in the 
course of the day, and go to her mother’s, and I am quit of 
her for ever.” 

“ And you ? ” murmured Leonora as Pepita paused, seem- 
ing to lose the thread. 

“ I shall drive quickly down to the St. Denis, dismiss 
my cab, not have the trunk taken upstairs, get a cup of 
coffee in the restaurant, telephone to the steamship office, 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


67 


Bowling Green, for a cabin, then get another cab and have 
the trunk put on. By that time the shops just across the 
corner will be open. They don’t know me there. I can 
buy a long wrap and a couple of rugs, and take them with 
me in the cab, and drive down as fast as I can, going to 
the pier, which is just on the way. We shall be there by 
nine o’clock at the latest. I shall send away the cab and 
go on board.” 

“ But if there isn’t any cabin left ? ” ventured Leonora. 

There will be,” said Pepita harshly. “ Why do you say 
things like that? Do you want to discourage me? If there 
isn’t, I will go second class — or steerage, faute de mieux. I 
will go, you needn’t be afraid, and no one shall know I have 
gone. Give me that hat I left out, and that veil.” 

With a contraction of the brow she pulled the hat toward 
her, and with quick, dexterous touches transformed its shape 
and expression, sitting down before the dressing-glass to 
try it on. “No one will know me,” she said with a shudder, 
catching sight of her ghastly face, as she smoothed her hair 
back plain and pinned the thick veil over it. She turned 
away from the glass as if the reflection hurt her, and put 
the hat and veil down on the table. 

“ When will Mrs. Pelletreau know ? ” asked Leonora 
rather timidly. 

“I shall write her a line and leave it with one of the 
servants, saying I’d found I’d better go, when Hilda went, to 
attend to some matters, and didn’t like to waken her. She’ll 
know by the trunk I am not coming back. She’ll be only 
too glad. Oh, I know her ! This house mustn’t get a smirch 
of scandal on its whitewash. When you’re intimate with 
bishops and build hospitals and things — ” And she clinched 
her hand vindictively upon a bottle which she was putting 
in her dressing-bag. 

“ Can you trust Hilda to get up when it’s time ? ” said 
Leonora, with a sickening sense of longing to be away from 
it all ; the fountain of her pity seemed to be getting choked 
up with mud and filth. 

“ That’s the bell to her room,” Pepita said, pointing to 
it. “ I shan’t ring for her till half -past five. I don’t want 


68 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


her to know IVe been up all night, and everything is done, 
except to write a label to put on the trunk at the St. Denis.” 

“You’re tired,” said Leonora; “lie down and try to 
sleep ; let me direct the label. I’ll watch and waken you.” 

Pepita gave a contemptuous laugh. “Fancy my sleep- 
ing ! ” she said in a hard voice, as she hunted about impa- 
tiently for a label. “ Lucky if I ever sleep again,” she said 
below her breath. 

The label was found and some commonplace name writ- 
ten on it. Then she walked about the room, pulled out the 
fingers of the gloves she was to wear and laid them beside 
her hat and veil, straightened the things on the toilet table, 
lifted her dressing-case and put it beside her hat and veil, 
and looked about for her umbrella with an intensity of 
energy that showed her abnormal state of brain. Hilda 
had left her clothes lying all ready for her to put on; there 
was absolutely nothing to be done. 

“ If you would only lie down for an hour,” murmured 
Leonora. Pepita did not even answer her, but walked over 
to the window. 

“ It is so slow getting day,” she said impatiently, look- 
ing out over the dim lawn scarcely yet a defined green, to 
the pure opal sky. “If there is any mistake about the 
orjler for the wagonette — that is all I am afraid of. It will 
be all up,” she muttered, grinding her teeth together as she 
turned from the window sharply ; “ it will be all up if the 
wagonette hasn’t been ordered and doesn’t come in time. 
If that simpering hypocrite has forgotten ” 

But at that moment a sound in the direction of the sim- 
pering hypocrite’s room made her start forward impetuously. 

“ It’s Mrs. Pelletreau ! ” she whispered hoarsely, blow- 
ing out one candle and thrusting the other into Leonora’s 
hand. “ Do exactly as you see I want you to. She mustn’t 
have an idea you know anything or have been here all the 
time. Be careful what you do, or you’ll ruin everything.” 

She threw herself upon the bed, deranged the pillows 
with a blow or two, sank back on them, pulled the counter- 
pane over her, and turned her head toward the door as Mrs. 
Pelletreau entered. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


69 


“ What time is it ? ” she said, opening her eyes wide as 
she looked from Leonora to Mrs. Pelletreau. 

My dears ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Pelletreau, what are you 
two doing awake at this hour ? ” 

She looked from Pepita on the bed to Leonora standing 
by her with a bedroom candle in her hand. 

“ I don’t know what anybody’s doing,” said Pepita sulk- 
ily ; “ I’ve been trying to sleep.” 

“ I got uneasy and heard noises down the corridor,” 
murmured Mrs. Pelletreau, looking doubtfully about the 
room. 

“ So did — Miss — Miss — I don’t believe I caught the name 
— and she came in to see, too. The blinds have been bang- 
ing, I think, but that blessed bromide that you gave me — ” 
and she yawned abandonedly. 

Leonora stood for a moment speechless, then moved 
toward the window, saying : Shall I fasten them ? ” 

Mrs. Pelletreau looked perplexed at the hat and gloves 
and the strapped trunk. “You’re — not — not packing up, 
dear Pepita ? ” she murmured caressingly, but anxiously. 

“ Oh, yes,” said Pepita, with a well-feigned effort to 
rouse herself, rising up on her elbow. “I’m so sleepy. I 
forgot to tell you I’m going to town when the wagonette 
goes. I’ve got a lot of things to do — it’s really best, you 
know. I was going to leave a line to explain and to say 
good-bye.” 

The look of relief in Mrs. Pelletreau’s face was unmis- 
takable. “I’m so sorry to have you go,” she murmured. 
“ Do you think you must ? ” 

A keen flash of Are darted from Pepita’s half -shut eyes 
as she said she thought it was best to go, if Mrs. Pelletreau 
didn’t mind. They talked about the train and the wagonette 
and the cup of coffee that the cook would make for her, as 
if there was not anything behind it all. 

“You look so tired,” Mrs. Pelletreau said, when these 
little details were settled; “now go to sleep, and I shall see 
that you are called. Get an hour’s sleep and it will do you 
good. I will pull down the shades.” 

As she turned to pull them down, Pepita managed to say 


70 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


in Leonora’s ear : Send them a cable, and mind all I’ve 
told you.” 

And now,” said the hostess, coming back from the win- 
dow and laying a gentle hand on Leonora’s arm, now you 
must go to bed again at once. I’m so sorry you got 
waked up; your father will reproach me if I let you get 
fagged out.” 

As they reached the door, Leonora turned involuntarily 
for a last glance from the strange pilgrim so soon to set 
out on her way of penance. But there was no glance for 
her; Pepita’s eyes were half closed and she was feigning 
drowsiness. 

Extraordinary creature,” whispered Mrs. Pelletreau as 
she left Leonora at her door. “ One can see she hasn’t any 
feeling; she’ll have a fit of temper, and that will be the end 
of it. I’m so sorry that you were disturbed. Try to sleep 
now, and ring if you want your breakfast brought to you.” 

Leonora was exhausted, and in youth sleep comes quickly. 
The sun was streaming into her room when she awoke with 
a start. She had meant to stay awake and watch the car- 
riage go off and see if Pepita would remember to look up 
toward her window and give her a good-bye glance. In all 
the long night, when they had stood alone together at close 
range with death and danger, there had never been a word 
from Pepita of gratitude, of decent courtesy even. It was 
as if every power of her being had been enlisted in the fight 
for life. It had not made Leonora yearn over her the less 
while it was passing. But now, as she woke and faced the 
daylight with strained, tired nerves, she had a moment of 
reaction; she remembered all the undisciplined creature’s 
self-will, all her selfishness, all her defiance. 

“ She might have looked at me once as I went out of the 
door,” she said to herself as she unbraided her hair and 
shook it down over her shoulders, walking slowly toward the 
window and looking out. 

The windows of Pepita’s room were all wide open to the 
morning sun; a cheery maid was singing as she beat the 
pillows out. Was it all a dream of the night? Leonora 
asked herself. And she glanced down toward the cistern 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


71 


that had looked so black and deep, with its sharp stone 
coping around the wide yawning cavern of water. At the 
moment that she looked two men were letting down, with 
some exertion of strength, the two great halves of the lid 
that ordinarily covered it. The cheery maid leaned from 
the casement where poor Pepita’s foot had been poised to 
leap the night before; she called out a subdued challenge 
to them, and they flung her back some chaffing answer as 
the heavy lid dropped down resoundingly upon the deep 
cavern. 

Leonora drew back, shuddering. ^^May God forgive me 
for forgetting what this morning might have been.” 


CHAPTER V 


O UTSIDE the door of the breakfast-room Leonora met 
Paul Fairfax passing out, going toward the veranda, 
where there was a sound of voices. At the breakfast- 
table Belinda Merritt sat alone. 

“We must be the last,” she said. “ IVe just come down. 
The men were all so keen about getting the news from the 
race I suppose that’s why they’re up so early; and, after all, 
it seems the papers haven’t come. And the Endicott-Bangs 
woman has got something on it, too, I’m sure, or you 
wouldn’t find her down a minute before ten o’clock.” 

“ The Suburban, that’s a race ? ” asked Leonora, trying to 
he interested as she took a muffin on her plate. 

“ Oh, don’t eat that,” Belinda said in a motherly way ; 
“wait for a hot one. I’ve just sent for some. Yes, that’s 
a race, and a big one. Oh, you’ve got a lot to learn ! How 
immense it must be to begin at the beginning at your age! 
For me, I don’t remember when I didn’t know all that there 
was to be known.” 

The hot muffins came, and she shared them with her com- 
panion as she evidently meant to share with her her knowl- 
edge of men and things. She told her over the coffee some- 
thing detestable about every man in the house : how Harry 
Lingard was drinking himself to death ; how Burton Hebber- 
ton, the man with the bald head, had lost one fortune at the 
gambling-table and was well on through another ; and what a 
cad Tom Roberts was, and how pertinacious he was, and how 
nobody could shake him off, not even Sancton Stockwell, and 
how it had ended in his being just as much “ in it ” as if he 
had belonged in it. 

“ And as to Sancton Stockwell,” she said, dropping her 
72 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


73 


voice and looking around to see tkat the servant had gone 
out, well, this is the last house in which to criticise Sanc- 
ton Stockwell. Ha, ha ! with a sweep of her hand around 
the table, ‘‘ the very spoons and forks would bristle up about 
it! What was it we used to have in our copybook — out of 
King Lear, wasn’t it? — ^ Plate sin with gold,’ and all the rest 
of it ; I can’t remember. Oh, no, my dear,” her voice sinking 
to a low confidential key, it made me sick last night to 
hear Mrs. Pelletreau and Sancton Stockwell talking about 
Pepita Husted. Everybody knows ” (with smothered vehe- 
mence), “ everybody knows Mrs. Pelletreau’s income wouldn’t 
keep up the gardener’s cottage on this place ! And just look 
around at all the appointments of this house, at everything! 

Whew ! But it’s barefaced, but it’s ” 

The man came in again with some omelette, and there 
seemed an impropriety in continuing the subject which 
Belinda recognised. So she said in a cheery, light tone as 
she took the omelette: 

Well, wasn’t it a sell — none of us knowing who Paul 
Fairfax was on the Touraine! I always own up when Pve 
made a mistake, and I’m ready to do it this time. But I 
can’t for the life of me see what he did it for — ^prince in dis- 
guise and all that sort of thing is cheap-play business. And 
I don’t understand yet why none of the men got on to it. 
Upon my word, you could have knocked me down with a 
feather when he walked into the drawing-room last night. 
Did you know it was he who was coming ? ” 

“ I ? ” said Leonora confused, I didn’t know anybody was 
coming ; I don’t know who he is now, except his name.” 

^^You don’t! Then I’ll tell you. I’m out of the run- 
ning, for he won’t speak to me, and small blame to him ! 
Well, make the most of your chances if he’ll speak to you, 
which he doesn’t seem averse to doing. Paul Fairfax, my 
dear, will be the biggest catch of the season next year. Kex 
Burrall is a pauper to him ; Lucy Bent ought to have waited 
a bit ! The Fairfaxes are solid, solid, and nobody begins to 
know what they’re worth. They’re old at it, too ; they say 
the grandfather had got his roots all over the land and was 
sapping up all the mines and railroads in the United States 


74 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


before anybody even knew his name. The father is the same 
kind, and here’s this young fellow, I shouldn’t wonder, would 
go at it the very same way. They’ve got good blood, too; 
the mother was — I forget who she was — but it’s one of the 
best New York names. Strange I’ve forgotten it — ^you’d 
know it in a minute. Well, she’s one of the pious kind, 
hates society, and goes in for missionary work and Bible 
classes and mothers’ meetings and all that. They live out in 
Pennsylvania, where they have great mines, and there she has 
her fill of bossing it over the workmen’s families. She thinks 
New York society is going to the bad, and she’ll probably 
think Paul has lost his soul if he accepts an invitation out 
to dinner. Ha, ha ! He’s made a good beginning coming to 
this house ! The old lady’d better be saying her prayers for 
him. I wouldn’t bet on Paul’s being canonised. Such a 
strapping, well-built fellow’s got a right to see a little of 
life, and he’s seen it, and he’ll see more of it, mark my 
words.” 

She urged another muffin upon Leonora, who hadn’t any 
appetite. The servant did not leave the room again, so 
there were no more confidences possible. When they left the 
breakfast-room Belinda familiarly put her hand on Leonora’s 
shoulder and they crossed the wide hall in this apparently 
intimate relation. 

Belinda called a halt on the step that led out to the veran- 
da, where all the men were sitting smoking, Mrs. Pelletreau 
and Mrs. Endicott-Bangs bearing them company. It was a 
very nice veranda; the sunlight came filtering in through 
vines; the air was sweet with honeysuckles and climbing 
roses which formed its green living wall on three sides; on 
the side against the house were wall-baskets of china, from 
which hung roses and more vines, and above them were some 
Luca della Bobbia medallions. Rugs were soft to the feet, 
cushions covered with pastel-coloured chintzes piled the bam- 
boo settees and chairs; there was not an inharmonious tint. 

Belinda said good-morning, not inaudibly. She rarely 
was inaudible. The men got up; probably they would not 
have done it if Belinda alone had been in question, but there 
was something about Leonora that brought them slowly but 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


75 


surely to their feet, even Harry Lingard, with a brandy-and- 
soda on the table at his elbow. Mrs. Endicott-Bangs nodded 
sharply at them, a sort of peck. Mrs. Pelletreau came for- 
ward, all gentleness and solicitude, wreathed with subacute 
vapoury smiles. She took Leonora’s hand and held it while 
she talked to her. The rest of them were babbling about the 
races and the failure of the morning papers to arrive. In 
the midst of it Belinda must have hazarded some remark 
about Pepita’s not being down to breakfast yet. 

“ Hot down to breakfast yet ! ” cried Mrs. Endicott-Bangs 
shrilly. “ Why, haven’t you heard — don’t you know ” 

“ WLat — what — tell me ! ” cried Belinda, starting for- 
ward, sharp expectation in her voice and attitude. Leonora 
felt herself growing pale ; she was standing by the railing of 
the veranda, with one hand on it, the other in possession 
of her hostess, who dropped it absent-mindedly when Belinda 
cried out about Mrs. Husted. 

“ Why, my dear, it’s nothing,” Mrs. Pelletreau said ur- 
banely but anxiously. “ It was the most natural thing in the 
world for her to do — that, at least, cannot be criticised.” 

“ But what was the most natural thing in the world for 
her to do? What is it can’t be criticised? Tell me, or I shall 
lose my reason ! ” 

We think she’s gone to prevail upon Husted to shoot 
Burrall,” said Burton Hebberton. 

“ Or upon Bex to take her back on trial,” muttered Harry 
Lingard thickly. 

And she wants to see about the children’s clothes,” piped 
up Tom Roberts. 

What’s the use of chaffing ? ” said Belinda half angrily. 
‘‘ Do you really mean that she’s gone away ? ” 

Really and truly, Belinda,” said Mrs. Pelletreau sooth- 
ingly ; and, as I say, it was the most natural thing for her 
to do, and we cannot wonder at it. She will get over the 
annoyance in a little while, of course, but for the moment it 
was unpleasant to be meeting people. She is quick-tempered, 
you know, and now at first she is very irritated.” 

But where has she gone ? Who saw her ? Did you see 
her to say good-bye ? ” 


76 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Oh, yes, I saw her; I saw her when I went up to bed 
and again this morning. She’s going to the Buckingham for 
a few days. I am to send her letters there.” 

The Buckingham ! ” cried Tom Koberts, pulling out his 
memorandum-book. “ I’ll go to see her on Monday when I 
go up to town.” 

“ You’ll never have been so welcome anywhere before, I’m 
sure,” cried Mrs. Endicott-Bangs, and everybody laughed 
save Tom himself, who looked a little doubtful for a moment, 
but ended by taking it in good part. He had to take many 
doubtful things in good part, as cads have to generally, but 
all careers have their drawbacks. 

At this moment a little messenger-boy was seen spinning 
along the drive on his wheel, now in now out among the 
trees. 

“ Wliat’ll you bet it is? ” cried Belinda. Hews from the 
race, or a despatch from Sancton Stockwell calling off the 
breakfast ? ” 

Hews from Plunket, ten to two,” said Hebberton, draw- 
ing out a much-worn pocketbook. 

Done ! ” said Lingard, poking a bill under the brandy- 
and-soda glass. 

Oh, it’s nothing,” said Mrs. Pelletreau. Sancton 
Stockwell wouldn’t call off the breakfast at this hour, and if 
Plunket had won Jack would have telegraphed last night, you 
may be sure. It’s more likely to be word from Hastasi say- 
ing my jacket isn’t done, or somebody wants to come down 
to-night if there is a room.” 

Mrs. Endicott-Bangs’s face had grown eager and sharp; 
it was easy to see she had something on Plunket; the men 
were all more or less of the belief that the boy was bringing 
news from the racecourse, but they kept pretty quiet and 
made little show of interest. The lad came up the steps, 
pulling the yellow envelope out of his pocket. 

Burton Hebberton took it. 

“It’s for you, Mrs. Pelletreau,” he said handing it to 
her. 

“ Sign for me, won’t you,” she said, rather gravely, taking 
it while the boy gave the book to Hebberton. Her eyes went 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


77 


over it slowly, then she hurst into a laugh, and held the 
telegram out to Hebberton. 

“ Read it aloud,” she said, “ I can’t do justice to it.” 

Hebberton caught it eagerly and ran his eye over it, then 
broke into a fit of laughter. “ Listen ! ” he cried, standing in 
the middle of the group. He need not have said it, for they 
were all listening breathlessly. With a solemn voice he read 
out the following despatch: 

“ Oh, sing unto the Lord a new song, for he hath done marvellous 
things. With his own right hand and with his holy arm hath he 
gotten the victory for Plunket. Amen. Alleluia. Jack.” 

A roar of laughter followed the reading of the news from 
^^good old Jack.” The young St. John,” ^‘babe of grace,” 
early pious,” and many similar epithets were bestowed upon 
the sender of the telegram. No doubt every one present had 
something staked on Plunket, except, perhaps, Fairfax. The 
jubilation was natural, but the profanity was not excusable 
in the presence of women, though of these latter Belinda 
seemed disposed to go the others one better in the use of 
sacred words and images of speech. They stopped at noth- 
ing ; the Deity and all His attributes were tossed from tongue 
to tongue with a reckless merriment that would have done 
credit to a barrack-room. Even Mrs. Pelletreau forgot her- 
self for once; it is possible Plunket’s victory meant more 
material gain to her than she acknowledged; but however 
that may have been, her joy of heart seemed irrepressible 
and naive, and following the lead of J ack,” found vent in 
words of Holy Writ and badinage about the most sacred 
mysteries of religion. They were going too far; she sud- 
denly pulled herself up and remembered Leonora as Tom 
Roberts began some travesty of the Gloria. She looked 
around for her. 

The girl was standing by the railing, which she grasped 
•with one hand ; she was very pale, but her fine eyes were full 
of something that Mrs. Pelletreau did not understand; she 
was drawing her breath quick, her delicate nostrils were dis- 
tended, her breast rose and fell. 

My dear ! ” said Mrs. Pelletreau, starting toward her 
6 


78 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


and dropping her tone to the one that had become by practice 
second nature to her ; “ my dear, don’t look so shocked at all 
this silly chaffing ; nobody means anything by it, these wicked 
men should not have talked like that before you, you dear 
young convent thing. They should have remembered that 
you haven’t yet had time to get used to their free-and-easy 
wit.” 

She put her hand out to take Leonora’s, with the caressing 
gesture that had apparently become a habit with her. Some- 
thing in this action seemed to sting Leonora sharply. She 
quickly pulled back her hand and put it behind her. 

don’t want to get used to it,” she said below her 
breath. ^‘1 don’t want to get used to it. I can’t — I can’t 
stay here any longer. I hope you won’t think I’m being 
rude, but I must go away now — now — I want to go — this 
morning ” 

My dear child ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Pelletreau, darting a 
frightened look at her and pressing closer to her, “ you don’t 
understand, I’m sure you don’t! Mobody thought of any 
disrespect to you, nothing was further from everybody’s 
mind. We had forgotten you for the moment, everybody 
had, because, don’t you know, we were all off our heads 
about this silly race. Why, I wouldn’t for the world — no- 
body here would for the world — say a word that anybody 
could construe into a slight or disrespect to you-^ ” 

^^You have not shown any disrespect to me,” she said 
hotly, with a quick gesture freeing her hand which Mrs. 
Pelletreau had got possession of. “ I wasn’t thinking of 
myself.” 

“ Then in God’s name what were you thinking of ? ” cried 
Mrs. Pelletreau, driven to desperation by the unlooked-for 
situation, a flush rising to her faded cheeks and her pale, 
close-set eyes glinting with apprehension. 

“ I shouldn’t think I needed to tell you — ^you must know 
— must understand.” 

“ Understand what ? ” cried Mrs. Pelletreau. 

“ That the horrible irreverence — the blasphemy of it — ” 
she cried quickly, starting toward the door. ‘^I — I want — 
to go away — ^will you send to me my maid — will you order a 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


79 


carriage for me — ” and she flashed out of sight into the hall 
and up the stairs, leaving them in a dumb silence gazing 
after her. 

They had been staring at her and at her troubled hostess 
while this disjointed dialogue was going on. Hebberton had 
folded the guilty bit of yellow paper and tucked it away in 
his pocket ; Tom Roberts had forgotten to shut his mouth as 
he sat staring at Leonora and her hostess face to face in this 
imlooked-for duel; Harry Lingard had fumbled aimlessly at 
his empty glass with a perplexed expression; Paul Fairfax 
had stood behind them, his hands in his pockets, a deep 
frown contracting his forehead, his eyes now on the ground, 
now raised to Leonora and her interlocutor. As for Mrs. 
Endicott-Bangs and Belinda, one had looked covertly merry, 
the other openly astounded. 

For a moment after Leonora^s sudden and startling exit 
there was a silence, then low exclamations, swelling in vol- 
ume, followed. 

“ Well ! if that wasn’t a throw-down for all of us ! ” cried 
out Belinda. 

Harry Lingard started to his feet sobered by the shock, 
not sure exactly who was hit. What in thunder is it all 
about ? ” he muttered. 

“ It’s all about us, about you and me and the rest of us ! 
It seems we’re a lot of pagans, Harry — a lot of pagans — out- 
and-out pagans! Do you mind it that you’re a pagan? Be- 
cause I don’t mind it if you do.” And Mrs. Endicott-Bangs 
beat a tattoo on the table with her small white fingers mani- 
cured to the last point of pink perfection, and laughed mock- 
ingly. 

“ If it’s only the blasphemy,” murmured Mrs. Pelletreau 
sinking into a chair with a look of partial relief, ‘^1 can 
tackle that. But I’m afraid about Pepita Husted; I found 
her in Pepita’s room last night. And Hungerford’s such an 
old friend of mine— and he may have ideas about his daugh- 
ter — men sometimes have, you know — and I wouldn’t for the 
world oflend him.” 

“ Well, he’s the last man to say a word on the morality 
question— now— of all times in his eventful life ! ” cried Mrs. 


80 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Endicott-Bangs. “I saw him in a cab yesterday morning 
on bis way to tbe Tuxedo train; when young Miss Inno- 
cence finds out about all that, you know, sbe’ll have another 
chance to be dramatic ! ” 

“ Are you sure it wasn’t the races that stuck in her pretty 
throat ? ” asked Hebberton, getting up and laughing the fat 
laugh of opulence as he fingered the betting-book in his 
pocket. 

“ She looked awfully nice, though, when she shook off 
Mrs. Pelletreau’s hand,” said Tom Koberts, “ and when she 
flashed out of the place just like that, you know.” 

Paul Fairfax turned his back upon the group of talkers 
and went down the steps of the veranda and walked away 
toward the stables. His brow was contracted, and he had 
a look as if he wanted to get out of it as much as Leonora. 

I suppose I must go and talk to her,” sighed Mrs. Pelle- 
treau, getting up out of her chair. She felt the true martyr 
spirit, ne’er to sink back on slothful bed ” when there was 
question of principle or policy to be upheld. I must soothe 
her down, and flatter her up, and get her out of her temper ; 
all of you be sure to help me along if we have to go over 
to the yacht in the wagonette together. I’d rather send her 
over with Paul Fairfax in the dog-cart, but they’ve just 
brought me word that the roan mare has gone lame, so Paul 
will have to take a mount, and Hebberton, too, I am afraid ; 
and the rest of us must pack into the wagonette. It’s only 
a drive of twenty minutes or so.” 

“ Oh, that’ll be all right,” said Mrs. Endicott-Bangs. 

“ You seem to take it for granted that she’ll back down,” 
mused Belinda, “ but upon my word, that sort of girl ” 

“ Oh, you haven’t known as many girls as I have,” re- 
turned Mrs. Pelletreau with a restoration of the gentle reas- 
suring confidence that was one of her great charms. The 
convent girl, I acknowledge, is the most difficult to deal 
with, but I have had my successes with them. You remember 
Anita van Boskirk? Well, her brother put her into my hands 
v/hen she came back from Georgetown. She was very trying 
for a month or two — the piety died hard. But, heavens! 
After a while it took all my strength to hold her in to a 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


81 


barely decent pace. It seems once they throw it over they 
don’t stop at anything.” 

I don’t know about Leonora Hungerford though,” said 
Belinda, drawing her brows together. “ On the boat coming 
over she seemed so ill at ease with everybody, and it wasn’t 
a fast crowd a bit, you know.” 

“ Who did you have ? ” asked Mrs. Endicott-Bangs. 

“Well, there was Leonard Courtney, who wouldn’t take 
the trouble to pick up a gold piece from the floor if he saw 
it lying there, or to look at Venus if she floated down to him, 
he is so hlase — just a heap of ashes. And there was that 
young Lymen and his mother; he is rather fresh, but not 
much harm in him. They live in Home, I don’t know what 
for except because it’s cheap and you can be bigger there on 
a little than you can here. Then we had the bishop, you 
know — no end of a great man — and his wife, who has an 
erroneous impression that she is great, too. And that old 
fellow — what’s his name — who tells funny stories till you 
want to stop your ears; and that dilettante stupid who writes 
verses and paints pictures and isn’t bad only because he 
doesn’t know how to manage it. You see, it wasn’t a crowd 
to frighten anybody, and yet I give you my word she was shy 
of us all, every one of us.” 

“ Well,” said Hebberton, laughing, “ that certainly 
showed, morally, a feehle digestion. Meadowburn air is the 
tonic for her ! There isn’t a doubt of that.” 

“I’ll bet you don’t get her to climb down, Mrs. Pelle- 
treau, clever as you are,” continued Belinda, leaning for- 
ward on her elbows and shaking her head. 

“ J’e/i ai la douce confiance!’^ returned Mrs. Pelletreau, 
smiling, as she went toward the door of the hall. 

“ Wish you good luck,” muttered Harry Lingard. 

“ It’s a delicate mission,” said Tom Roberts, cutting the 
end off a fresh cigar. 

“ Say a prayer for me ! ” she whispered, shaking a ta-ta 
good-bye to them as she disappeared into the hall. 

When she reappeared twenty minutes later she found the 
group still in possession of the veranda. The belated papers 
had been brought in just as she went out on her diplo- 


82 


THE TENTS OP WICKEDNESS 


matic errand, and had been eagerly seized upon by the party, 
who had torn them open to read the details of Plunketts 
victory. Fairfax had returned from the stable a moment 
before she re-entered, and stood upon one of the veranda 
steps holding an open paper before him, glancing af its 
headings. 

“Well,” cried Belinda, throwing her paper aside and 
starting up, “ what success ? Is she resolved to go to town ? ” 

“ We’ve been engaged in silent prayer for you ever since 
you left,” said Mrs. Endicott-Bangs. 

“ I’m afraid we didn’t wrestle hard enough,” remarked 
Hebberton, folding up the sporting sheet of his paper and 
putting it in his breast pocket. 

“I’m afraid you didn’t,” said Mrs. Pelletreau, with a 
faint touch of asperity in her tone. “ She’s an obstinate 
young idiot. I don’t envy Hungerford his undertaking, if 
he’s going to try to make her go.” At that moment she 
perceived Paul, and rapidly softened and sweetened her tone, 
though glancing away from him as she spoke. “ It was a 
mistake, leaving her so long abroad. I always told her father 
so. A girl gets out of touch with society as it is at home; 
she makes her friends among people whom she’ll never see 
again, and ten to one is a total failure when she is brought 
out. It’s too bad,” she added plaintively ; “ she is so pretty 
and attractive.” 

“ You don’t really mean to tell me,” cried Belinda, “ that 
she’s going back to town to-day ? ” 

“ That’s just what I mean to tell you, Belinda dear,” 
answered her hostess softly, as she took the order book for 
the stable from the footman for whom she had rung in the 
hall as she came through it. “ That’s just exactly what I 
mean to tell you. She’s going to town on the 2.10 train ” — 
writing as she spoke — “ on the 2.10 train — telephone express 
for trunk — put Brasenose in the surrey — ” and she handed 
the book to the man, adding to him : “ Saunders has the 
other orders; take that to him immediately, and come back 
to me.” 

“ She’s going away and breaking up everything — ^giv- 
ing such an affront to — to everybody,” said Belinda below 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


83 


her breath, knitting her brows. “ That’s what I call 
courage.” 

That’s what I call making a fool of herself and getting 
a black eye that she’ll never get rid of. I wouldn’t give 
ten cents for her chances in society after this,” exclaimed 
Mrs. Endicott-Bangs harshly. 

“ All the same, it’s courage,” muttered Belinda stoutly. 

All the same, it’s uncomfortable,” said Mrs. Pelletreau 
with a little uneasy laugh, hurriedly writing the cook’s 
orders for Leonora’s luncheon. 

Belinda turned and walked to the end of the veranda, 
and stood looking out over the smooth unruffled face of 
nature perfected by art, that makes the charm of a well- 
kept country place. Courage appealed to her, and convic- 
tions. She had not had home training worth a rush, and 
as for religion, she knew as much about it as a Choctaw. 
Getting into society and getting on in the world and mak- 
ing the most of a small income had been the ambitions set 
before her, and she had risen to them with the vigour of a 
strong young will, and with more than average ability. 
When she first met Leonora on the steamer she had envied 
her and distrusted her, and had ended by disliking her. 
Something about her this morning at the breakfast-table, 
however, had softened her; she had given her “points” 
about Paul Fairfax with an impulse of generosity. And 
now she felt a strange thrill of admiration for this exhibi- 
tion of loyalty and courage, though the object of its ex- 
istence and the cause of its manifestation she could only 
faintly comprehend. After a few moments of silence she 
turned abruptly and went back toward Mrs. Pelletreau, who, 
with knitted brows, was folding the memorandum for the 
cook and giving it to the servant. 

“ Take it down at once,” she said, and then turned toward 
Belinda. “Are you all ready? You know we’ll be starting 
in less than half an hour.” 

“ Oh, it won’t take me five minutes to get ready ! ” re- 
turned Belinda, moving toward the door. “Pm going up 
to see Leonora a minute or two before we go.” 

“ If you don’t mind, I think you’d better not,” said Mrs. 


84 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Pelletreau with a little more decision than she generally 
allowed herself to show. “I feel, you see, my dear,” she 
went on, laying her hand on Belinda’s arm and leading her 
to the end of the veranda and softening her tone, “I feel 
she’s better let alone just now. She’s a little emotionee and 
probably a little ashamed of herself, too — I don’t see how 
she can help being. And I’m sure the best way is to let 
her alone entirely; she’ll feel more comfortable, she’ll get 
over it quicker. The least said, soonest mended. When 
you meet next month at N^ewport don’t allude to it; just 
act as if nothing had happened. This is only a phase, my 
dear. It will soon pass over. In a few months she will be 
a nice, biiight, sensible girl like you. It isn’t her fault ; that 
morbid sort of religious teaching can’t have any other re- 
sult. If her father had listened to me ! ” 

And she sighed. In truth, she had been one of the 
aspirants for the charge of the little orphan; everything 
had been most comme il faut in the household, and a ridicu- 
lously remote relationship between the Hungerfords and the 
Pelletreaus had seemed to give it a tone ol plausibility. 
But, as Mrs. Pelletreau had said this morning, men were 
apt to have ideas about their daughters. Even after the 
calm passing away of poor Pelletreau in his asylum, and 
even during the time when his intimacy with Mrs. Pelle- 
treau was, if not town talk, at least town whisper, Mr. Hun- 
gerford had not shown the slightest wavering in his inten- 
tion with regard to Leonora. Leonora’s present visit was 
the result of a long-past promise made to Mrs. Pelletreau 
and to a conviction in the father’s mind that the girl was 
old enough to know right from wrong, or, to speak more 
correctly, decency from indecency. And it was due, too, to 
an infatuation, an entanglement, of which Leonora was 
mercifully ignorant, and which for the moment spread for 
him a haze over all the affairs of every-day existence. 

Mrs. Pelletreau keenly dreaded his disapprobation; she 
was happily at the moment beyond the necessity of con- 
ciliating him as far as material protection went, and his 
present infatuation made it improbable that he would ever 
be anything to her again; but, for old sake’s sake, she didn’t 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


85 


want to fall under his displeasure about Leonora — she didn’t 
want, in fact, to fall under any one’s displeasure. She was 
pre-eminently a cautious woman; she laboured hard to make 
no enemies. 

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, 

And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere. 

And so,” she purred into Belinda’s ear, “ so we will 
let the thing drop. Don’t talk it over with the others ; don’t 
mention it to — to Sancton Stockwell, if you can help it. 
He’s a particular friend of Hungerford’s, and it might 
annoy him to have to take one side or the other. I hope 
there won’t be the least feeling about it. I will explain it 
to him myself, and I’m going to write to Hungerford to- 
night. If you can, get the men and Mrs. Endicott-Bangs 
to be quiet about it. I don’t see the need myself of men- 
tioning it at all.” 

It did not take Belinda many seconds to assimilate all 
this, and to see that Sancton Stockwell’s rather peculiar 
attitude toward religion and society made Mrs. Pelletreau’s 
present path a somewhat thorny one. She despised Mrs. 
Pelletreau, but she gloried in the greatness of Sancton 
Stockwell; and so she conquered the little weakness that 
Leonora’s courage had bred in a heart unaccustomed to such 
meltings. She renounced reluctantly the impulse to go to 
her and show her sympathy, and instead, she said abruptly: 

All right. I’ll see what I can do with them,” and with 
the grateful pressure of Mrs. Pelletreau’s arm about her 
waist, she turned back and walked toward the group at the 
other end of the piazza. 


CHAPTER VI 


L eonora heard the wagonette drive up and the horses 
for the men stamping as they were led up and down 
before the house. Mrs. Pelletreau had come tapping, 
tapping at the door a few minutes before, and had mur- 
mured tenderly all sorts of regrets and hopes, and had gone 
softly away. And then the little commotion of arrange- 
ments and directions, and they had all driven away or rid- 
den away, and a great silence had seemed to fall on the 
place. She sat down by one of the windows that looked out 
on the lawn. She had pulled down theAhade of the one 
that overlooked the great covered cistern. That had rather 
got upon her nerves. She wanted to forget it, if the thing 
were possible, and how the covers had resounded when the 
men let them drop down over it while she was there this 
morning. She gazed out over the lawn, velvet smooth, flecked 
with shadows of trees through which sunlight flickered ; 
across it one or two robins hopped, lifting with every step 
abrupt, courageous heads. Some birds sang above in the 
branches, a dog lay in the sun. The click-click of the lawn- 
mower sounded at a little distance. The air that came in 
through the curtains was vaguely sweet with honeysuckle 
and rose and fresh-cut grass, and faintly spiced with blow- 
ing over beds of carnations. Everything looked so peaceful. 
It was all so fair, so stable, so Arm, and as if it had God’s 
blessing on it. What was true — ^what was false? Could 
she believe her own body’s senses? Was that inner soul’s 
sense of hers to be relied on that had told her that the look 
of peace was all a black, black lie? That a man’s caprice 
or a woman’s blunder could break it into a thousand frag- 
ments of discord in a moment? Who paid the man whose 

86 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


87 


machine was going click-click over the velvet turf? From 
what source came the luxury, the order, the well-being upon 
which she was looking out? When it all went to pieces, 
when the bolt of God's wrath fell, perhaps the robins would 
hop still over the grass that was growing rank, and luxuriate 
in the seeds that were not cut away. 

The birds might sing in the untrimmed branches of the 
spreading maples, but the wind that blew over the carnation- 
beds would bring a fainter spice; weeds would belittle them, 
and the growth of rose and honeysuckle. The sunshine 
would come and go, but the scene would be less fair, the har- 
mony less perfect. What was of God? What was of man? 
How could she be sure of anything? She, Leonora, young, 
inexperienced, and alone, had presumed to throw down the 
gantlet here to the livers of the life that perhaps her father 
led, that perhaps all people in this strange land led. Why 
was she left so alone? Why was there nobody to tell her? 
Perhaps she had done wrong, perhaps it was self-love and not 
love of God that had fired her to defy them all in that mo- 
ment to which she now looked back with shame and doubt. 

It was the second time in this eventful twelve hours 
past that she had mounted the steed of noble impulse and 
been carried into the thick of the fight, only to be unseated 
when she needed all her nerve. Poor Leonora! this was so 
different from the riding-school around which she had can- 
tered in such calm security for the uneventful twelve years 
past. 

The sulky maid came in from the dressing-room, where 
she was packing Leonora’s trunk, in stormy protest at the 
change of plan and the abbreviation of her outing. Leo- 
nora pulled herself together. A servant should not see her 
perturbation. Ho doubt the kitchen was before now in pos- 
session of the facts. Were they laughing at her? She did 
not know. She only knew it gave her keen pain to feel she 
was being laughed at, either in the servants’ quarters below 
or on board the yacht where the great Sancton Stockwell 
was even now probably welcoming his guests. What would 
he be saying about it when they told him — ^he, the friend 
of bishops and the builder of hospitals and the endower of 


88 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


churches? She wished she didn’t mind; she thought she 
shouldn’t mind, if she knew she had done right. And she 
thought, probably, if she had done right she should have 
known she had done it, and she shouldn’t have minded, as 
she certainly was minding now. 

She went over and over this in her tired brain while the 
sulky maid folded her dresses with set teeth and scowled 
at her when her back was turned. If there had been only 
one human being to whom she could have spoken, who could 
have understood what she was feeling, what she had felt 
when she had thrown Mrs. Pelletreau’s hand from her and 
when those dreadful words had leaped from her lips, and 
when she had flashed from the veranda, and flown up the 
stairs and locked herself into her room, and flung herself 
crying on the bed ! If there had only been some one by 
her to say, “ I know how you feel, no Christian could hear 
such words without indignation; it may not have been wise 
to speak, but it wasn’t wrong to speak,” it seemed to her 
she could have borne it. The sting of ridicule was sharp, 
but it was nothing compared with the pain of feeling that 
she had brought discredit on her faith, that she had added 
by her vehemence to the dishonour that these people had 
been heaping on the Lord she loved. What would she not 
have given if she had not spoken! 

It will be seen that her agitating and nearly sleepless 
night had had a mischievous effect upon her nerves. She 
tried stoutly to keep up before the maid, out of whose sight 
she seemed unable to get. At last the servant came to 
summon her to luncheon, and she went down to the dining- 
room with her hat on. She was filled with the disquieting 
conviction that the man knew all about it, and she tried to 
eat in vain. To make it worse, before the fiction of this 
meal was well begun, she heard a horse’s hoofs outside on 
the gravel, and Paul Fairfax came awkwardly in. 

I thought you were gone to breakfast on the 
yacht,” she said faintly, letting her eyes fall before they 
met his. 

I’m going to join them at polo,” he said uncomfortably. 
“ I found I had an — an — errand in the village.” He pulled 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


89 


a chair out from the table and sat down opposite her. “ Get 
me something to eat, will you ? ” he said over his shoulder 
to the man who had served Leonora. He did not seem to 
be afraid of him, as she was. 

Why should he be ? ” she thought. He had not been 
doing anything to make himself ridiculous.” 

The man bestirred himself and brought some luncheon 
for him. He ate more than Leonora certainly, but he did 
not seem to enjoy the meal much more than she did; and, 
it must be said, they were both rather constrained. When 
there was a sound of wheels on the gravel outside, Leonora 
got up, saying hurriedly she thought it must be the trap 
for her. He got up, too, taking his hat from the table by 
the door in the hall, saying, as he looked at his watch, that 
she had plenty of time. The maid was already by the door 
of the surrey, and the man was putting in the dressing-bag 
under the coachman’s feet. The express-wagon was stand- 
ing a few rods off, and two men . were just bringing down 
Leonora’s trunk. She felt sure they were the men who had 
carried it up last night, and it seemed to her inevitable that 
they knew the occurrences that had brought about the neces- 
sity for bringing it down again so soon. She wished, when 
she handed the maid money to give to them, that it might 
soften their feelings toward her and incline them not to 
laugh so loud about her when they went downstairs. She 
got into the surrey, and Paul Fairfax, standing beside it, 
shut the door. 

“ Good-bye,” she said, taking the wrap and parasol which 
he carried down from the hall. 

Oh, I shall see you at the station ! ” he said hastily. 

I’ve got to go down that way, you know.” 

The drive soothed her; everything was green and still; 
there was a fresh breeze and the sunshine was delicious. 
About half-way to the station she heard a horse behind 
them, and Paul drew up as he passed her, and they talked 
for a minute, and then he lifted his hat and rode on, say- 
ing he would meet her at the train. He rode well, and 
looked his best on horseback. She felt vaguely comforted 
that she should not have to buy the tickets nor to check her 


90 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


trunk; all these sordid cares seemed to belittle her suffering 
and to cheapen her sacrifice, if sacrifice it was. 

When they reached the station, he was waiting for her. 
He already had the tickets and the check, and while she 
was putting them into her purse she hoped he did not see 
that her hands were shaking. It was such an inconceivable 
situation. The ignominious details of it — getting tickets, 
going back! From what, and why? 

He said, looking at his watch, that it was still four 
minutes till the train was due, so they walked up and down 
the platform, avoiding tubs of butter and cans of milk that 
stood ready for the freight train coming later. The few 
loiterers about the station — for this was a way train and was 
not much used — looked idly at the tall, handsome youth and 
maiden and wondered probably that they did not find more 
to talk about as they walked together. Presently, with a 
great shriek, the engine rounded a comer down the track 
and thundered abreast of the little station and stopped, 
panting. Under cover of this uproar Leonora said to Paul, 
as she put her foot on the step of the car: 

I’m afraid you think I’ve done something very silly, 
but I couldn’t help doing it. I didn’t stop to think.” 

There was no chance to hear his answer, he was behind 
her and the aisle was narrow. The stop was of the shortest 
here; he had scarcely put her into her seat and given her 
her wrap, when the train began to move. All she could 
catch of what he said in a suppressed voice as he turned to 
go was: 

‘‘ You are well out of it ” 

There had been something before and there was some- 
thing after it, but the noise of the boisterous engine and 
the racket of the rattling cars drowned all but the words. 
You are well out of it.” He had to spring from the step 
to the platform; it brought back the early morning at 
Rouen. She saw he was all right, and then the train rushed 
on, and he was out of sight. 

She sat looking out of the window upon the flat, green 
country through which they were passing. The maid was 
behind her; she was freed from her curious and disapprov- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


91 


ing eyes for the moment. She wished she knew what Paul 
Pairfax had said to her when he went away. She did not 
think that the words she had caught warranted her in be- 
lieving that he approved what she had done; all that she 
dared hope was that he was sorry for her, and that he spoke 
sincerely when he said she was well out of uncongenial sur- 
roundings. Belinda had hinted that he had seen as much 
of life as other men, and that he was no better than they; 
but he seemed different to her, and she hoped he was. She 
might never see him again; and though it had sometimes 
seemed humiliating to her to be pitied, it was far and away 
better than being laughed at, and she should always feel 
that he had not laughed at her, and would not permit, per- 
haps — certainly not encourage — the others to laugh at her. 

As they neared the city the flat, green fields degenerated 
into swamps and marshes and oil factories and mountains 
of refuse and engine shops and gas tanks. The smells were 
horrid, and cinders and dust thickened the air. When they 
got out of the car the crowd was bewildering, but she did 
not want the maid to see she was bewildered. The ferry 
once crossed, there was worse bewilderment ahead. The Sat- 
urday afternoon crowds were rushing* for the outgoing boat, 
a funeral cortege was making its hazardous way through the 
unheeding antagonistic humanity which was fighting toward 
its outing in the suburbs. • The shrieking of paper venders, 
the clamour of cabmen, the ringing of bells, the whistling 
of engines, made it pandemonium. Her fright made her 
return seem more respectable and less ludicrous. But when 
the cab, into which she had climbed in such dread, drew up 
before the shut-up house, and she felt the journey was ended, 
the contemptible side again asserted itself. Leaving the 
maid to pay the cabman, she went up the steps and rang 
the bell. She rang several times before the door was opened 
by the second man in his shirt-sleeves, and with a degage 
smile that was as unfamiliar to her as were his shirt-sleeves. 
.He fairly staggered when he saw her, and the maid, despite 
her sulks, was convulsed with laughter as she saw his per- 
turbation. Somebody from above called down jocosely to 
him, and Leonora heard a faint scream from the housemaid 


92 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


who had leaned over the balusters and seen her. A general 
scurrying took place; she went upstairs with rather a re- 
vulsion of feeling; they might laugh at her, but she could 
punish them. The wretches! she would give them all a 
week to get out of the house. Her room had not been 
touched since she left it yesterday — the windows were shut, 
the air was close, her peignoir was hanging on the back of 
a chair, a towel was on the floor of her dressing-room, as 
she had thrown it down before she went away. There was 
an odour of cigar smoke in the upper hall and the scent of 
very florid cooking came up from below. She rang the bell 
of her room sharply. He of the shirt-sleeves and the degage 
smile came up with the sleeves and the smile under cover 
and a certain pallor around his mouth, for the place was 
a desirable one, and Newport always was his choice for 
summer. To be thrown out of place in June was certainly 
hard lines. 

At the end of half an hour Leonora knew substantially 
that the cook and the butler were out of town, and the 
laundress was called away through illness in the family, 
that the kitchen-maid would have to cook the dinner and the 
footman serve it, and that, beyond a doubt, there had been 
a festivity the night before, and that another one probably 
had been in preparation for to-night. 

It was dreary; she felt homeless; she seemed living in 
the midst of enemies. Her anger with the servants was 
short-lived; their infidelity seemed only a small part of the 
general wretchedness. 

What was left of the afternoon was nearly gone when, 
with her maid, she went out into the dusty arid street. It 
was Saturday, and she was sure to find some priest in his 
confessional, if she could find a church. She remembered 
one, not far away. The town had a deserted look. The 
great shops which had crept into the city’s best avenue 
were closed or closing ; swarms of tired-looking women came 
out of one; some men, with bags of tools slung over their 
shoulders, were going in at the door of a piano warehouse 
to turn in their record of the week’s work and perhaps get 
their pay. A messenger-boy sauntered along, shying peb- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


93 


bles at a cat locked out of house and home by a departing* 
family. The fine houses were closed by board shutters and 
doors, some sickly looking children played on the steps of 
one; a few wagons filled with merchandise racketed along 
as if belated. But it was all dingy, dusty, deserted; the 
pavement felt hot as she trod on it, the air she breathed 
was close and warm. She thought of the springy green 
turf where the robins hopped that she had looked at that 
morning*; pf the clear limpid air pierced by the song-spar- 
rows’ note; of the sweet scent of clover and carnation, and 
her heart sank and her head ached with its new problems. 
The pallid babies, the fagged workwomen, the grimy men, 
were God’s children, weren’t they? And were those others 
His children who, surfeited with luxuries, mocked at His 
name and broke His laws, and sinned with impunity against 
Him and against their brothers ? Who would tell her ? She 
was alone, absolutely alone in this great roaring babel of a 
city — in this whole broad continent that stretched from one 
ocean to another and that harboured more problems than 
it harboured people. 

She turned from the avenue; a great hospital rose, story 
upon story, on her left; an ambulance stood before ori^j of 
its gates; the faint smell of medicines added to the burden 
of the air. 

She climbed the steps of the church when she reached it, 
followed by her reluctant maid; there were others going 
in — tired-looking women coming from their shops, and men 
fresh from toil. Within, it was still and cool and dim; 
those who entered trod softly, those who were kneeling in 
the neighbourhood of the different confessionals were silent. 
Leonora wondered to which of these confessionals she should 
go; a woman made a place for her in a seat she passed out- 
side one, and that determined her. It seemed a long time 
to the Protestant and protesting maid, who sat bolt upright 
a few pews back, before Leonora got up and went in her 
turn into the confessional. As the curtain dropped between 
her and those waiting outside, she wondered what her mis- 
tress was saying and what was happening behind it. This 
was what was happening, and this was what was being said : 

7 


94 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


For a few moments there was silence; the little lattice, 
about six inches square, between the inclosure where the 
priest sat and the bench where Leonora knelt behind the cur- 
tain, was closed. He was hearing the confession of a young 
fellow on the other side who had had a fight with another 
workman three weeks before, and who had missed Mass last 
Sunday because he went off to the country on his wheel, 
and who wasn’t quite sure about an oath or two he might 
have let fall that night when they came back late, stopping 
at some taverns on the way. When the priest had dropped 
the lattice on him, he leaped forward a little and looked at 
the watch he held in his hand before he lifted the one on 
Leonora’s side. It was past six a good deal; he had been in 
the confessional since three o’clock; supper would be over, 
and after it he had to come back for three hours more. 
Human nature made a little protest, but he ended by sink- 
ing back on his seat and lifting the slide and saying to the 
invisible penitent beyond it: 

Go on, my child. How long is it since your last con- 
fession ? ” 

The ineffable magic of the words “my child” made the 
londy Leonora’s voice tremble as she spoke. She told him 
when she had last made her confession, and then she told 
him that she had been distracted at her prayers many times, 
and that she had failed twice to make her daily meditation ; 
that she had been impatient to a servant, that she had re- 
sented more than once not having her own way. Then she 
paused suddenly. 

“ Is that all ? ” he asked after a moment. “ Is there 
anything that troubles you ? ” 

“ Yes,” she said, gasping for breath. “ I don’t know if 

I have done right — about something ” 

“ Tell me,” he said patiently, putting his watch back into 
his pocket, and giving up his supper. It was “ all in the 
day’s work.” He was used to scrupulous women. They 
were hard to deal with, but their souls no doubt were as 
precious in the sight of the Lord as were the more rea- 
sonable ones. He listened for some amplification of the 
inability to meditate, some further developments of the root 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


95 


sin of self-love, some self-accusation in the matter of impa- 
tience, but it did not prove the sort of case he looked for. 

I have only been in America a few days,” she said in 
an agitated voice. “ I have always lived in a convent since 
I was a very little child. It is hard for me to know what 
I ought to do — in cases ” — then she caught her breath — “ in 
cases where people seem to me very wicked.” 

“You have probably been well taught,” he said. “You 
must listen to your conscience.” 

“ But I don’t know whether I have done right this very 
day — not seven hours ago. I try to make up my mind — 
but I can’t tell — I am so unhappy ” 

“ Tell me,” he said gently. “ Perhaps I can see it and 
help you see.” 

“ I went yesterday to stay with some friends of my 
father whom I had never seen before, people he likes very 
much. This morning they laughed and talked about sacred 
things — the holiest names, the words that one says on one’s 
knees, that one hears in church. It could not have been 
worse. They said things that would make one shudder, all 
laughing and talking, and forgetting me. I started up — I 
wanted to go away. When they remembered me, they tried 
to make light of it and to make excuses. The lady whose 
house it was, and who is my father’s friend, tried to take 
my hand, and to say things to soothe me, and I flung her 
hand away from me and said I would not stay, and told her 
to send my maid to me and to order the carriage to take 
me to the train. Then I ran up to my room and cried a 
great deal, and she followed me and tried to persuade me 
not to go. I would not give up, and I have come away. 
I don’t know whether I did right or not; I don’t think it 
was because I was angry; it wasn’t the insult to me I 
minded. I don’t think it was that at all, but I cannot tell. 
It was a very dreadful thing to do, at my age and in the 
house of one of my father’s friends — but — they said such 
things — they made such hideous jests about what is most 
sacred to — to — everybody that believes in God. I thought it 
was right when I did it ; it seemed to me I couldn’t stay with 
a houseful of people who could say such things about our 


96 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Lord ; but afterward I began to feel frightened and ashamed, 
and I know my father will be angry, and I am afraid per- 
haps it was not right.” 

The priest was silent for a moment; then he said: “I 
think you did right. You need not be ashamed nor fright- 
ened. I don’t see how you could have done otherwise. All 
the same, I hope you won’t have to do it again. Keep as 
far as you can out of the way of hearing such things ; always 
try to get away when people begin to talk like that. ^ Let 
your light shine,’ don’t try to make it shine. God will take 
care of you. He will make some way out of it for you. 
If your path is difficult, you may know His eye is never off 
you. Don’t disappoint Him; He means to make you very 
good. He won’t fail you if you don’t fail Him. How make 
an act of contrition, and I will give you absolution.” Then, 
after the words of absolution, he added : “Lor your penance 
say the Yeni Creator every day this week. Go to Holy 
Communion to-morrow. God bless you. Pray for me.” 
And the slide dropped and she went out. 

It had not taken many minutes; nothing could have 
been simpler, more matter-of-fact. Put an immense load 
had been lifted from her — an invisible hand had pointed out 
her way. It was a simple example of “ that marvellous sys- 
tem” the ingenuity of which Protestants are often pleased 
to praise, by which the Catholic Church holds and guides 
her people. The meeting of the tired priest and the bewil- 
dered girl was not accidental. It was planned long centuries 
before. Given a church implied a confessional, inside it 
a man who has spent years of his life in the study of God’s 
will and human want. The bewildered girl knows where to 
go, the weary priest knows what to say. Eliminate the 
supernatural from it, it is still a “marvellous system.” 
Quite marvellous ; almost marvellous enough to be of divine 
origin. 

This was, though perhaps she did not know it, a turning- 
point in Leonora’s life. All through the peaceful twelve 
years at the convent she had gone weekly with her childish 
faults and with her maturer shortcomings to the good old 
priest who heard confessions there. Things were different 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


97 


now; with no one to speak to, she was thrown out utterly 
alone into a world as evil as man often makes it. Where 
could she go for counsel ? There is a church she remembers 
having passed; inside the church there is a confessional; 
inside the confessional there is a priest. Instinctively, as a 
child to its mother’s knee, she ^oes there. 

The priest, with his six hours’ imprisonment in that nar- 
row box — some one always whispering, whispering, now in 
this ear, now in that — learns much of human nature, as well 
as much of Divine compassion. He may begin his work in 
his youth, ignorant of life, enthusiastic for good, fresh from 
his seminary, perhaps never having sinned mortally since 
he was born. A year or two in a great city parish, to which 
his bishop generally sends him to learn his business, will 
give him experience and to spare. He will learn more in that 
time than a Protestant clergyman will learn in a lifetime 
of the relations of parent and child, of brother and sister, of 
husband and wife. He will know as much as the oldest 
merchant of temptations to financial wrong-doing; he will 
be familiar with the provocations of the rich, with the bur- 
dens of the poor. It is a great education for an intelligent 
mind, but as an education it is bought at a high price — much 
labour and renunciation of the generally recognised rewards 
of life — and would scarcely pay an enthusiast, much less a 
calm, practical man. 

Leonora went down the aisle and knelt for a long time 
at the steps of the high altar. The maid grew fretful, and 
wondered what she was about so long. 


CHAPTEK VII 


I T was late Monday afternoon, almost dinner-time. The 
valet had arrived, and so had his master’s trunk. Any 
moment now might bring the master himself. Leonora, 
with a palpitating heart, was listening over the baluster for 
the sound of a latch-key in the door. Everything in the 
house had subsided into quiet. The cook had returned unos- 
tentatiously — you would think she had never been away. 
The butler was in his place, moving about with a sad de- 
corum which seemed never to have been interrupted; the 
laundress was at her tubs with a concentration that forbade 
suspicion of outside interests. The smell of florid cooking and 
of cheap cigars had been exorcised; the second man seemed 
to feel he had lived down the smile and the shirt-sleeves; 
it was a well-ordered menage upon which Mr. Hungerford 
entered, while Leonora listened anxiously behind her dressing- 
room door to his step as he went to his room. She thought 
he shut the door of it rather sharply, as if he had had a 
letter from Mrs. Pelletreau, or as if the story of her leav- 
ing Meadowburn had filtered through Tom Poberts’s porous 
personality into the club. Tom would no doubt have pledged 
himself not to talk about it, and in all sincerity would have 
meant to keep his promise, but malgre lui gpssip always 
oozed out of him. She resolved not to go to her father’s 
room, but to meet him on the stairs and go down to dinner 
with him, and not to reveal her mind to him till after din- 
ner. Never ask a favour in the sirocco, nor of a hungry 
man. She had a great deal to ask. A daring scheme had 
come into her mind after leaving the altar where she had 
knelt so long in the twilight on Saturday; she had invoked 
all her saints and said all her prayers, and now she only 

98 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


99 


waited for the right moment to put it to the test, and win 
or lose it all. 

It seemed to her her father’s greeting was cold and his 
manner constrained at dinner. It certainly was not easy to 
find things to talk about when she did not know where he 
had been, and when he perhaps did not know when she had 
come back. But at last she caught his eye upon her when 
she looked up unexpectedly to him, and his forehead showed 
a frown and his eyes were sharply critical. Her breath 
came quickly; from the moment she caught his eye she 
knew he knew how she had flung Mrs. Pelletreau’s hand 
from her and how she had reproached her with the blas- 
phemy that she had heard in her house, and how she had 
hotly said that she was going away, and how she had scorned 
her blandishments and persisted in leaving. Well, as long 
as she had done right, she could bear it; the only cause we 
can’t suffer in with courage is a doubtful one. 

When, however, the dinner was over and she had gone 
with her father into the library, she was really very nervous. 
She brought him matches for his cigar, which he seemed 
hours in lighting, then she laid the evening paper near his 
hand and turned the lamp up a little. He did not take the 
paper, nor turn to the light. Her heart thumped; when 
was he going to speak? She stood before him silently, her 
face half turned from him, one hand fingering but not open- 
ing a book upon the table ; the light from the lamp fell upon 
her hand and wrist, but not upon her half-bent head and 
face pale with agitation. It seemed cruel; why did he not 
speak? At last he said in a cold voice, not looking at her: 
When did you get back from Meadowbum ? ” 

On Saturday,” she answered in a low voice, 
thought you were asked till Tuesday,” he said briefly. 

“ Yes, I was,” she answered, still looking down. 

“ Something changed your plans ? ” he asked with an 
evil ring in his voice. 

“Yes,” she said again. There was a long moment of 
silence. He did not seem disposed to break it. 

“Papa,” she said, lifting her eyes from the floor and 
looking at him, “ has Mrs. Pelletreau written to you ? ” 


100 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“ She has,” he said curtly. 

“ Then you know why I came away ? ” she returned in a 
voice almost inaudible, dropping her eyes again. 

I know why she thinks you came away. I expect to 
hear from you some different version of the story — some- 
thing that will exonerate you.” 

“I have no doubt she told you the truth, papa; why 
shouldn’t she ? ” 

She could not have told me the truth. I refuse to be- 
lieve that you could so have forgotten your duty to me and 
to my friends. I refuse to believe that you have done that 
which will forfeit you your place in society, will make me the 
laughing-stock of the clubs, and will nullify all I have done 
and planned to do for your pleasure and your success.” A 
sudden anger seemed to seize him. He rose to his feet and 
stood facing her. 

^^Papa,” she said, raising her eyes, which were full of 
some sort of feeling that he did not understand as she met 
his angry ones, “ don’t think I am ungrateful. You have 
been more than good to me. I want to please you — indeed, 
indeed I do! More than anything ” 

^^You have gone a strange way about it! Did you act 
like a cursed fool before those gossiping people to please 
me? Did you start a story, that by to-morrow will be in 
everybody’s mouth, to please me? Did you show yourself a 
prude and a bigot to please me? Or did you do it to please 
those women that I have trusted you to for twelve years, 
and who have done their best to disregard my wishes and 
to render you utterly unfit for life at home ? ” 

Leonora stood facing him, her face very pale, her hands 
hanging down, the fingers interlaced. 

“NTo one has ever said words like that to me before,” 
and her voice was husky. “ I know you must be very angry 
to hurt me so, and I know I must have done something 
that wounds you very much to make you speak so. It is 
very unhappy — it is very different from anything that I 
ever imagined — could — could — happen — to a daughter — that 
wanted to — do right.” She choked down a sob, and then 
went on, her voice steadying as she spoke : “ I did want to 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


101 


do right — I have always wanted to — want to now. But I 
ask you to think of one thing. Please remember it was you 
who left me at the convent for twelve years. I had nothing 
to do with it. You must not blame me, nor do I think you 
ought to blame the nuns.” 

“ They will know whether I blame them or not ! ” he 
muttered, walking up and down the room. 

Listen, papa ! ” she said earnestly. “ They only taught 
me what they taught the other children. If it was wrong, 
that was their mistake. If it was right, time will show. 
But try to remember — ^how different it is living in a con- 
vent — how things strike you when you leave it. People who 
live in the world get used to — to — a great deal. When it 
comes upon you suddenly, you don’t know for a moment 
how you are to act ” 

They should have taught you how to act. If they 
couldn’t, they had- no business to take my money and to 
waste your time.” 

I wish,” said Leonora timidly, looking down and breath- 
ing quickly, I wish you would let me ask you something.” 

There was a silence. Mr. Hungerford threw himself into 
his chair again and knit his forehead into a frown and 
tightened his lips as he relit the cigar that had gone out 
while he gave way to his burst of temper. His daughter’s 
gentleness had had its effect upon him ; but he was still very 
angry, and if she had defended the nuns she would have 
lost her case. 

^‘Well?” he said in a cold voice. 

“ I know I am not fit to go into society,” she said falter- 
ingly. “ It is all too new to me, too different. If you would 
let me have a little time— if I could get used to things a 
little, gradually— if I could think it all over— in some quiet 
place ” 

I don’t see what thinking over you’ve got to do. You 
know my wishes and you know your duty to me, if you 
haven’t had a pagan bringing up all these twelve years that 
I have left you at the convent. Fathers have some rights, 
I suppose, that children are bound to respect.” 

Believe me, papa, I have always been taught that obe- 


102 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


dience and respect and devotion to you were my great duties. 
How could it be otherwise? Why, in France it’s very dif- 
ferent from here, I should think ; even when sons and 
daughters are grown up and have got married they seem in 
a sort of subjection to their parents still.” 

Mr. Hungerford gave a growl of contempt; he despised 
Frenchmen, and their exaggerated deference to the family 
heads had been a source of innocent merriment ” to him 
always. 

“ There’s reason in all things,” he muttered, feeling that 
in some way Leonora had put him in the wrong. 

Leonora eagerly caught at the small advantage she had 
gained, and by it gained a momentary confidence. “ If I 
had been educated in this country I shouldn’t have been 
taught half as much about my duty to you, papa, as I have 
been taught in France. I know that by the few American 
girls that were in the convent. They shocked everybody by 
what they said and did about their parents’ wishes for them. 
They defied them; there was one girl dismissed because she 
would not submit to the rules that her father had laid down 
about her going out with her friends on holidays. It was 
a great scandal.” 

Mr. Hungerford stroked his moustache to hide an invol- 
untary and unexpected smile — it came so suddenly after his 
temper that he hardly knew how to deal with it. “ A great 
scandal ! ” Ha, ha ! About a girl not staying in when her 
parents said she must! Well, Leonora had had a bringing 
up. He must not be too hard upon her. And this sort of 
thing might be useful to him. He would not condemn the 
nuns unheard ; they would almost seem to have been playing 
into his hand, after all. 

“I can understand they must have been astonished,” he 
said in a voice which he was glad to find sounded grave; he was 
afraid it might have come forth a little hysterically husky. 

“ And, you see, papa, they could not have taught any one 
to disregard the greatest of human ties — they could not, 
you know.” 

Mr. Hungerford bowed gravely. “ It is a relief to me 
that you can assure me of this.” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


103 


“ And — and,” began Leonora, with a quavering anxiety- 
pinching at her throat, “ if you would let me — ask — ^you to 
do something — different from what you had — so generously 
— planned for me ” 

He felt inclined to say brusquely, Ask away ! I can’t 
tell you till I know,” but he reminded himself that it was 
not exactly the Gallic parental attitude or mode of expres- 
sion, so he discreetly said, as he knocked the ashes from his 
cigar : Tell me what you have planned for yourself, and I 
will consider it carefully.” 

Keassured somewhat by this, though with her heart still 
thumping loudly at the waist of her pretty dinner-dress, she 
sat on the arm of a large chair opposite him and revealed 
to him her plan. 

It was this ; She reminded him of the existence of a very 
intimate friend of her mother’s, a remote cousin, who had 
gone to live in Connecticut, where her son was the young 
rector of an Episcopal church. There was a daughter, of 
about her — Leonora’s — own age. The three — the mother and 
the son and the daughter — had been in Paris two years ago, 
and she had gone out to Fontainebleau with them for a 
couple of days, and she had liked them better than almost 
any people she had ever known, she said. The intimacy 
between her mother and Mrs. Warren would have made her 
feel at ease with her in any event, but there was some- 
thing about her that endeared her to every one, she was so 
motherly, so calm, so wise. Her own children adored her, 
she was goodness itself. The daughter, too, she liked im- 
mensely, though not quite so much as she liked the mother. 
The son was excellent, a grave young man, very much given 
up to the duties of his calling. Their home was very pleas- 
ant ; it had been described to her in the many letters which, 
ever since the two days at Fontainebleau, she had received 
from them. She had found a letter of welcome from Mrs. 
Warren awaiting her on her arrival from Europe, in which 
she had begged Leonora to ask her father for a long visit 
from her. 

“Even the length of the summer,” she had said. “I 
cannot think of a greater happiness than having your 


104 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


mother’s child at home under my roof. Your father will 
recall the terms of intimacy between us, and he will believe 
that you will receive from me the affection and solicitude 
that my child would have received from her, if it had been 
God’s will that she should have outlived me.” 

Leonora had pulled the letter from her pocket and had 
read in a trembling voice this extract from it, and then 
had handed the letter to her father, not daring to look in 
his face, but awaiting, with throbbing agitation, the answer 
that he would give, which would either blight her hopes 
or confirm them. If she had looked up and studied his 
face in the three or four moments of silence that followed, 
she would have seen something that would have bewildered 
her a great deal. He looked at the letter, appearing to 
study it, but not reading a line. A keen light came into 
his eyes; it was — ^well, not altogether a good expression that 
held his lips together in such a tight clamp. He was mak- 
ing a rapid decision, reversing a lot of plans that it had 
seemed to him, six months ago, his duty to make and carry 
out. They had been distasteful to him, but he had had the 
manliness to hold to them, till this unexpected loophole of 
escape had opened before him. To be rid of Leonora for 
another six months, to throw up that tiresome Newport 
scheme for the summer, to be free to follow the untram- 
melled life that had just become so vital a necessity to him; 
this was what the Meadowburn incident made possible. He 
had always resented bondage of any kind, but just at this 
moment he was blindly resentful of anything that savoured 
of restraint. When he spoke, he tried to smother the relief 
in his voice. 

“ There is something in this suggestion,” he said, hand- 
ing her the letter and settling himself back in his chair, 
while he drew in a whiff of smoke. “ I remember Mrs. War- 
ren very well.” 

“ And you liked her, papa, didn’t you ? ” murmured Leo- 
nora eagerly, looking up. 

Mr. Hungerford remembered her chiefly as a pale, quiet 
Quaker girl from some Philadelphia suburb, to whom he 
never could find anything to say. He had had many objec- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


105 


tions to her intimacy with his wife, chiefly social ones, added 
to the personal one of his inability to find anything to say 
to her. But he summoned from the misty past the recollec- 
tion that she had married well, that she was left a widow 
several years ago, and that by some chance he had lately 
heard her son spoken of as a young man of promise. These 
people were to him as beings of another sphere ; they seemed 
to have nothing in common with him and his world; but if 
Leonora liked them, and if it was a decent way out of her 
Meadowburn blunder, why, he was justified in welcoming it. 
It could do her no social harm, for this family were of good 
standing ; it would accustom her gradually to mingling with 
the outside world, and take off the edge of her convent 
prudery. Yes, certainly, she should go, he thought; but he 
must not consent to the plan too suddenly. So for a half- 
hour he played her skilfully, and then seemed reluctantly 
to give in to her somewhat unreasonable demand. 

Leonora went to her room in dizzy happiness, and per- 
haps she did not thank her saints more than they deserved. 
One never knows how or why things happen, and with what 
evil tools angels and ministers of grace may carve out noble 
monuments. She sat up far into the night, writing eager 
letters to the Warrens. Then she fell to planning for the 
summer, disposing in her own mind of the servants and 
devising for the household till the autumn. She wrote also 
to the convent, in explanation of the telegram she had sent 
about Pepita. How long ago it seemed since that frightful 
night! Was there ever a time when she had not known 
about Pepita — ^when she was unfamiliar with the names of 
Sancton Stockwell, of Belinda Merritt, of Paul Fairfax, of 
Kex Burrall? How fast the current of her life was run- 
ning! Where might it not swirl her to-morrow? But now 
that that black rock of a Newport season was escaped, she 
felt she might almost begin to believe that she would come 
into smooth waters again. Surely the Connecticut rectory 
would be smooth waters! 

The saints will hear if men will call, 

And the blue sky bends over all. 



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CHAPTER I 


T he morning after her arrival at the rectory Leonora 
was sitting with Mrs. Warren on the veranda that 
overlooked the churchyard and the broad village street 
bordered with branching elms and the wide green sunny 
meadow stretching down to the river beyond. It was very 
still; the air was perfumed by the roses that climbed about 
the lattice, and by the mignonette that bloomed in the beds 
below. There were some wicker chairs on the piazza and a 
matting rug, and a small table on which was Mrs. Warren’s 
work-basket and a little pile of linen which she was over- 
looking, with needle threaded for the stitch in time ” which 
was part of her domestic religion. But it was not plied as 
vigorously as usual. She was almost forgetting her pillow- 
cases in the pleasure of looking at Leonora and of tracing 
the resemblances and the differences between her face and 
her mother’s. She was thinking, as Mrs. Pelletreau had 
thought the evening she had arrived at Meadowburn, “ The 
girl is far and away more beautiful than her mother ever 
was.” Leonora’s loveliness was joy to her — ^placid, satisfying 
joy, such as placid, deep natures like hers feel. It glorified 
the memory of her lost friend; it sanctified the romance of 
her youth. The girl’s innocence and modesty made her one 
faint misgiving about sending for her melt away. 

Leonora was sitting on one of the arms of the big wicker 
chair opposite her, holding some old photographs of her 
mother in her hand. Mrs. Warren had laid her work down 
in her lap and sat looking at her. 

^‘But thee knows,” she said thoughtfully; ^^thee knows 
thee’s far and away more beautiful than thy mother— far 
and away.” 

8 


109 


no 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Leonora gave a little cry of pain and started to her feet, 
her face darkening. “ Don’t say that, please don’t say that,” 
she murmured. “ You have forgotten — these old things have 
faded — and they were poor to begin with. I don’t think it’s 
fair to trust to photographs — sometimes I think old photo- 
graphs had better be burned up.” 

Mrs. Warren shook her head. haven’t forgotten. I 
don’t need photographs to tell me how she looked. Mo; she 
was a lovely, slender, spiritual-looking girl, with a grace and 
gentleness all her own, and eyes that nobody could forget.” 

Well ? ” said Leonora with a challenge in her voice. 

“ But thee’s thy father over again for colouring, for 
height, for proportion, for distinction. I used to think he 
was almost the handsomest man I had ever seen. People 
talked about him as they would about a great general, or the 
royal family.” 

“He is handsome yet,” said Leonora faintly, leaning 
against the post of the piazza and looking down discontent- 
edly at the photographs. 

“ And thee’s like him. Thee has his body, but her soul 
looks out of it.” 

Leonora, with a sudden impulse, knelt down beside her 
and put her hands on hers. “ Oh, is it her soul ? I want 
it to be ! I want it more than anything.” 

The elder woman, undemonstrative by nature and chilled 
by custom, bent down and kissed her forehead, and drew her 
hands up to her breast and kept them there. “ Yes, thee is 
thy mother’s child more than thy father’s; thy voice, thy 
little tricks of manner, thy smile, all bring her back to me 
as if she had only gone away a day or two ago. If thee 
needs the love she had from me it is ready for thee, Leonora.” 

There was an instant’s close embrace, and then Leonora 
rose from her feet and went back to the post of the veranda 
where she had been standing, and gazed as she had gazed a 
moment before across the sunny meadow to the river flow- 
ing by. Both these reticent natures had bfeen strained by 
the words spoken and needed time to readjust themselves. 

Mrs. Warren took up her work with an unsteady hand 
and began to darn a tiny break in the linen. She was a 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


111 


singularly attractive woman for her age, which she seemed, 
with the assistance of nature in the matter of gray hair, to 
do everything in her power to accentuate. She was not more 
than fifty, but she wore clothes that many women of seventy 
would have resented in these days. She had never left off 
her widow’s cap, nor her plain, straight, black gown. If she 
had dared she would have worn a thin white fichUy folded 
across her quiet breast in imitation of her Quaker grand- 
mother, but that common-sense forbade. She was the mother 
of an “ advanced ” Anglican clergyman, and the less said 
about her Quaker ancestry the better. Her thees and thous 
were kept for the sanctity of the fireside, and a good many 
other things were suppressed rather than exorcised. Hot 
that she was not strictly honest and sincere beyond most peo- 
ple, but she was peace-loving and reticent, and she made up 
her mind silently and without reserve. Her wide-apart gray 
eyes saw things in their own way. A stranger did not inter- 
meddle with her joy, neither with her decisions. 

Her children were her life, but her justice made her see 
she had no right to expect to be theirs. She told herself: 
Love goes forward and not backward. She exacted little and 
was patient with small returns for her long labours. Hot 
that the returns were small ; but she recognised that she only 
held her children by the thread of circumstance, and that at 
any moment they might go out from her to homes of their 
own, or careers of their choice, and leave her desolate. That 
was life; she accepted it without complaint. Heither of her 
two children probably knew that she had these thoughts, and 
perhaps the equivalent of them would have seemed to them 
disloyal, originating in their own minds. 

But this peaceful presence in the home in which Leonora 
had sought refuge made it seem to her a sort of paradise. 
She compared the veranda where they were sitting and its 
simple furniture with the veranda at the house in Meadow- 
burn and its luxurious fittings ; she contrasted the tidy maid 
with the liveried footman, the shadow of the stone church 
which fell across the unstudied grass with the sweep of velvet 
turf, where the lawn-mower went click-click from week’s end 
to week’s end. And above all she arrayed one against the 


112 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


other — the calm-eyed hostess with the pile of mending in 
her lap, and the pale, serpentine Pelletreau with keen eyes 
running over the memoranda for her many servants and 
arranging for the entertainment of her many guests. Surely, 
Leonora thought, she had got into smooth waters, and no 
tempests could ever reach this quiet haven. When she said 
something like this to her companion as she stooped to pick 
up a spool that had rolled on the floor, the latter gave a 
sigh and her calm forehead contracted for a moment. 

“ Thee need not hope to get out of the reach of tempests,’^ 
she said. “ Smooth waters don’t seem to lie between this and 
heaven; better make up thy mind to that.” There was an 
undertone of what in any one else would have seemed bit- 
terness. 

What can she fear,” thought Leonora, “ with these de- 
voted children, with this peaceful home ? ” 

And while she was silently speculating she heard the gate- 
latch drop, and raising her head she saw Sarah coming along 
the path. 

“Well,” said her mother cheerfully as she came up the 
steps, “ how did the sewing-class go this morning ? ” 

“ W orse than ever ! ” cried the girl, throwing herself 
down in one of the big wicker chairs and taking off her 
shade hat with a sort of vehemence. “ W orse than ever. It 
is a waste of time. I shall tell Edward it is a perfect waste 
of time.” 

“ Oh, don’t discourage Edward,” said her mother sooth- 
ingly. 

“ Look here, mother,” she exclaimed, “ Edward ought not 
to discourage me, giving me such work to do.” She sat up 
straight in her big chair. “ Look here ! ” was a provincial- 
ism which always preceded a protest, so her mother was pre- 
pared. “ There are eleven children in that class, and ten of 
them feel they are conferring the biggest sort of a favour 
on St. Andrew’s Church in general and on the rector’s family 
in particular by coming to be taught to sew. The eleventh 
is too stupid to know her value and comes because it’s Sat- 
urday morning and she has been told by somebody to come. 
We’re bribing them, we’re buying them, we’re making them 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


113 


think they’re worth more than they are. It’s dishonest and 
it’s undignified, and it’s all of a piece with methods of church 
work that I don’t approve.” 

“ Oh, my dear ! my dear ! ” said her mother in a pacifying 
tone. “ I’m afraid they must have been very bad this 
morning.” 

They were very bad this morning,” exclaimed Sarah, 
sinking back in her chair. “ Bad enough to make me want 
to slap them — slap them, every one. They were all well 
dressed, better than I was, except the stupid one, who was 
ragged beyond language; and they tittered and giggled and 
looked at each other’s clothes and poked each other’s ribs, 
and wouldn’t listen when I read, and wouldn’t look when I 
tried to show them a new stitch. They will read dime novels 
before they are a year older, and they’ll clatter their clothes 
up on a sewing-machine when their mothers won’t do it any 
longer for them. There were only seven this morning; and 
those seven only came because it’s pretty nearly time for the 
picnic. The Presbyterian picnic isn’t quite up to ours — 
going in the Benthorps’ two wagonettes gives ours a certain 
cachet, and the things to eat are better — otherwise they’d be 
Presbyterians to a girl! And, mark my words, before the 
end of September they’ll go over to the Methodists in a 
body, for the chestnutting in Frost’s woods. Old Frost sets 
the dogs on all but the faithful, and bands of them go for 
two afternoons under convoy of a teacher, and Frost gives 
them red apples besides all the chestnuts they can find, and 
as much sweet cider as they can drink, fresh from the cider- 
mill. I know I would apostatise for a chestnutting in Frost’s 
woods on a mellow September afternoon, and you would, 
too, Leonora, if you’d ever been there 1 ” 

“ ^ Belike ’ she would,” said her mother, laughing. 

“ Take me there and try,” said Leonora, picking up 
Sarah’s books and parasol which, in her vehemence and 
exhaustion, she had let fall upon the floor. 

Sarah was rather a small person, but well-rounded and 
very straight. Her colouring was dark, a great contrast to her 
fair-skinned mother and her pale, gray-eyed brother. Her 
eyes were dark, with long lashes and rather heavily marked 


114 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


brows, her features were good, her mouth a very little too 
large, rather excusable, though, because her teeth were fine 
and her smile flashing. Taken altogether, however, she was 
not exactly a pretty girl, the tint of her skin was not bright, 
and she was too forcible, and not at all coquettish. Added 
to this, she dressed with marked plainness and seemed to 
have few of the charming fobiles of girlhood. Her aspira- 
tion was to he useful, not noticeably pious or intellectual, 
but just useful. She was quick-witted and had a good sense 
of humour, which saved her from being preter-naturally 
grave. Nothing, however, had as yet saved her from being 
narrow and, in a pious way, self-willed. Her surroundings 
had favoured this. As sister of the young and able rector 
of an important country parish she was socially and ec- 
clesiastically of some importance, even at twenty. She 
felt she was scorning the world by dressing plainly. She 
adored her mother, but would secretly have liked to wear 
an Anglican third order dress if there had been such a 
thing, as much as her mother secretly would have liked 
to wear her Quaker grandmother’s cap and kerchief. But 
Sarah had no love for her Quaker ancestors, and she only 
tolerated what she heard of her father’s philosophic abstrac- 
tions; she felt no sympathy with Broad Church, with High 
and Dry Church, nor with Low Church; she half -uncon- 
sciously classed Catholics with Jews, and all the Protestant 
forms of faith were lumped together as “ the sects.” Ex- 
treme ritualism displeased her; there was a point that must 
not be passed, and yet that must be reached, under pain of 
failure. Something solid and not sentimental, something 
that appealed to reason, that had its roots firmly in history 
and yet towered up toward the sky in faith and flowered in 
magnificent works of charity, that was what she thought she 
had laid hold of. It will be seen that her limitations were 
close and cramping, but so are those of a bullet, which goes 
to its mark with the more force because of them. 

Sarah was a good little girl, and though she only aspired 
to be “ useful ” she had a lot of deep enthusiasms, chief among 
which was the craving to help her brother and to know that 
his work prospered, and to see him crowned with the crown 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


115 


of eternity and, incidentally, with that of time. She did not 
like to talk about saving souls. That to her peculiar taste 
savoured of cant ; she would rather talk about sewing-schools 
and mothers’ meetings and the outward and visible signs of 
doing it. That Edward, with all his reserve, sometimes spoke 
simply about such things was an offence unto her, but she 
was too loyal to criticise him even to her mother. 

There were also things that she felt disposed to criticise 
in her mother; for instance, as they sat on the veranda that 
morning,’ that the maid should bring in a big basket of peas 
to be shelled for the early dinner and a big white bowl to 
put them in when shelled. Her mother had given the order 
to have them brought; she laid aside the pillow-cases and 
took the basket and the bowl and smiled acceptance of 
Leonora’s help. Sarah’s brow contracted. What need there 
was of this she could not see. The cook had plenty of time 
to shell three bushels of peas before dinner if they had been 
left to her. It always tried her, but she never spoke of it. 
Mrs. Warren was not a critic, neither was she one to invite 
the offering of criticism; consequently there was generally 
outward decorum if not inward peace in the household. Per- 
haps the thought of how the peas might strike Leonora added 
to her interior discord, which was not dispelled by the hur- 
ried entrance of her brother from the churchyard gate which 
communicated with the vestry-room by a short cut across the 
lawn. He held a telegram in his hand, and scarcely had time 
to explain to them his hurry as he passed the veranda. 

A delayed message from the bishop,” he said ; I have 
scarcely time to catch the 11.40 train. A diocesan committee 
meeting — it’s too bad.” 

“You’ll lose your dinner,” murmured his mother, going 
on placidly with the peas, but with some of the zest taken out 
of the work, since he would not be at home to eat them. 

“Can’t I help you get off?” exclaimed Sarah, springing 
up, quite forgetting her fatigue. 

“ Ho, no,” they heard from the hall above, as his door 
shut. She did not go up after him, but Leonora saw her 
brushing his hat in the hall and pulling out the fingers of a 
pair of gloves and looking up the stairs anxiously. In two 


116 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


or three minutes he came down hurriedly and caught the hat 
and gloves from her hand. 

“No time even to kiss you, mother,” he said, rushing 
through. “ Sorry about the row up the river this afternoon,” 
he called out to Leonora from the steps. And to Sarah, who 
was following him down to the gate : “ If you can, go to the 
church after dinner and see that Lathrop doesn’t slight his 
work — he’s always the better for a little watching. I’m sorry 
to have to ask you.” 

“ Oh, that’s nothing,” cried Sarah alertly. “ And the 
notices — shall I write them out ? ” 

“ Yes, yes, if you will. And if Bellows comes set him at 
work ; he knows what he’s to do, but he mightn’t like to take 
hold if I weren’t here.” 

“Yes,” called out Sarah to the fast-receding figure. 

“You’ll come home by the 11.15 train to-night? ” 

A faint “ Yes ” came back to her as she leaned over the 
gate and watched the tall lessening figure striding out of 
sight under the branching elms. She sighed as he disap- 
peared. Not at the loss of the row up the river that they had 
planned, nor at the work that she was to do to help him, 
but at something for which she had not yet found a name. 

He looked harassed and careworn — something for the last 
few months was breaking his sleep and taking from him the 
pleasure that he had formerly seemed to find in his work and 
in his home. Few men in the diocese had been pushed to the 
front as he had been; all parties seemed to have agreed to 
trust him. The bishop was old and not of the same school 
of churchmanship, but he seemed to have accepted him and, 
in a way, even to lean upon him. He certainly was a rising 
man in the church. “ The next vacant bishopric,” Sarah had 
been saying to herself for a year and a half — “ the next 
vacant bishopric ! ” And she had used much diplomacy in 
trying to find out how young a man could be made bishop. 
It is true Edward was little more than thirty-four years old, 
but could any one object to that? Wasn’t it better to have 
a young man of parts than one of middle-aged mediocrity? 
Once she had broached the episcopal ambition to her mother, 
but she had been met with such stern coldness that she had 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


117 


never approached the subject again to any one, least of all, 
of course, to her brother. 

Edward Warren was tall, was stooping, was blond; he was 
even more reserved than his mother, from whom he inherited 
many traits. From his father, the judge, he seemed to come 
by a speculative turn of mind and a habit of introspection. 
His sound business head, capacity for work, and unusual abil- 
ity as a preacher were the points which were patent to the 
public, and the only ones perhaps that were. Ho one, from 
his bishop down, knew more about him than that he had a 
keen business mind, was a good worker, and as a preacher 
stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries. 

When Sarah came back to her big chair on the veranda 
she said, with a sigh, throwing herself into it, “ Too bad 
about the river, Leonora ! It is such a perfect day.” 

“ I don’t mind about returned Leonora. “ There’ll 

be other perfect days. But I’m sorry Edward has to hurry 
off like this.” 

It’s just like that stupid old bishop! ” said Sarah calmly, 
as if she were talking of a cow or about Pretzel, the dachs- 
hundf who had just sprung into her lap and curled himself 
up with a sigh of utmost satisfaction. “ It’s just like him. 
He forgets a little and doesn’t care a good deal. They say 
he was always rather that way, but I can’t believe he was 
born such an imbecile.” 

“ Sarah ! ” said her mother reprovingly. 

“ I can’t help it, mother,” returned Sarah, pulling out Pret- 
zel’s glossy ears. “ It is natural for us to be complimented 
by his partiality for Edward, but it seems to me it would be 
unnatural for us to be blind to the fact that this same par- 
tiality shows him to be in his dotage. Why, Edward is 
opposed to him in every possible way 1 He is an old-fashioned 
Low Churchman and Edward is more advanced in his views 
than any man in the diocese. He sends Edward here to 
straighten out matters after that wretched fool of a Burton 
has nearly wrecked the parish, and expects Edward to snuff 
out the candles and shut up the confessional and dock off 
half the celebrations and make a model Protestant machine 
of it ! He puts him on the standing committee when there 


118 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


isn’t a man on it that thinks as he does. He works him for 
all he is worth, because he depends on his intelligence and 
clear sight ; and he is such a stupid he can’t see what a mud- 
dle the diocese will be in after Edward has got it under his 
thumb, and what a buzzing there’ll be in the hive of pious 
Protestant-minded ministers when they find out what they’re 
committed to! As I said before” — kissing Pretzel on the 
head — all this shows us that our honoured bishop has en- 
tered on his dotage 1 ” 

“ It shows us,” said her mother, snapping the last pod of 
her basket of peas and dropping them into the bowl, that 
our good bishop is above party lines and means to serve God 
rather than any system of man’s device. There! Leonora, 
we have finished our work ; I am sure thee’s never shelled peas 
before.” 

Let me take them to the cook,” said Leonora, starting 
up. “ I feel quite proud of them.” 

When she came back to the veranda she saw a little cloud 
on Sarah’s face. It was possible that one of her mother’s 
rare rebukes had caused it to gather there, but in any case 
the bishop and his dotage were banished from the balcony. 

Mrs. Warren shook a lot of the green little threads and 
tendrils of the peas from the big white apron that she wore, 
and resumed her mending. She had scarcely done so when a 
carriage drew up at the gate. There was a glitter of harness 
seen through the trees and in a moment a footman came up 
the path. As he appeared Sarah involuntarily cast an anx- 
ious glance at her mother’s apron. Without noticing the 
glance, as involuntarily Mrs. Warren put her hand quietly 
back and loosened the strings of the apron, drew it off and 
folded it up. This apron was a keen trial to Sarah — keener 
even than the peas — but it was characteristic of their rela- 
tions to each other that it had never been mentioned between 
them. The maid answered the ring at the bell and then 
brought in some notes, while the party on the veranda 
watched the footman mount to his seat and the carriage 
drive away. Sarah put out her hands for the cards. She 
took out one from its envelope. 

“ How nice ! ” she said, handing one of the inclosures to 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


119 


Leonora. A garden-party on Wednesday week at the Ben- 
thorps’; I am sure it will be nice. Leonora, you will make 
your dehut ! Don’t you think garden-parties are better than 
dances? You can walk about, and it doesn’t make any differ- 
ence whether there’s any man to talk to you or not.” 

I’ve never been to a dance, and the only garden-parties 
to which I’ve ever been were the garden-parties at the con- 
vent, where the papas and mammas were the only guests, and 
where there were things to sell au profit des pauvres, and 
where there was a Normandy farm and donkeys to ride and 
little plays to look at and we wore our white uniforms. I’m 
afraid they weren’t like this to which we’re bidden 1 ” 

‘‘ Scarcely ! ” cried Sarah. To begin with, the place is 
beautiful. Mr. Benthorp has no end of money and only this 
one young daughter. He’d give his eyes to make her happy, 
and she declines to be made happy his way. Her mother has 
been dead since she was a little thing, and she’ll be a great 
heiress, and, naturally, he wants her to marry the right sort 
of man, and, unnaturally, she doesn’t want to marry any 
man at all.” 

What does she want to do? ” asked Leonora, looking up. 

“ Well,” said Sarah, knitting her brows, “ she wants to be 
a sister.” 

“ A — a — sister ? ” asked Leonora, knitting hers. 

“ Why, yes ; a member of — of an order,” said Sarah, wind- 
ing up her sentence with quick decision. 

“ A — a — nun ? ” asked Leonora doubtfully. 

“ Certainly,” said Sarah, a nun ; and her father doesn’t 
want her to be if he can help it.” 

“And so he gives her garden-parties,” said Mrs. Warren, 
folding up her work. “ I should think he might find some- 
thing else to work a cure.” 

« A — ^Protestant nun ? ” asked Leonora with embarrass- 
ment. 

“An Anglican nun,” answered Sarah, with a touch of 
asperity. 

“ Oh ! ” said Leonora, looking down and speaking with 
much the same tone of half-bewildered dissent that she had 
used when she said “ Oh ! ” to Belinda after the latter had 


120 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


propounded her theories of American life and manners. 
Leonora felt she had a great deal to learn and prepared her- 
self for surprises more or less acute. 

I know thee’s got some pretty dresses,” said Mrs. War- 
ren with evident intent to divert the conversation from its 
present channel. “ I want thee to look thy best. I’m very 
proud of having such a grand young creature under my wing 
this summer.” 

“ I’ve lots and lots of pretty summer clothes,” said Leo- 
nora eagerly. Organdies and piques and foulards, and em- 
broidered muslins over silk, and a lace dress that is a dream. 
Besides warm things, you know: serges and outing cloths 
and all that. I’m so glad that hideous old Newport won’t 
see a rag of them, aren’t you ? ” And she threw her arm 
around Sarah. 

Come up and show them to me,” said Sarah. “ Let’s 
frivol.” 

And they went upstairs together. 


CHAPTEK II 


M r. HUHGERFORD, to salve his conscience about 
letting Leonora spend her summer at this dismal 
hole, as well as to give employment to man and 
beast, had sent a couple of horses and a groom to one of the 
village livery-stables for her use and her friends’. The rec- 
tory horse was pretty well worked, as the rector had to look 
after a mission parish seven miles off, so that the two horses 
and the two traps and the groom were quite an addition to 
the pleasure of the family. On the afternoon of the garden- 
party the carriage was standing at the gate punctually at 
four o’clock. Sarah, in a dark dress and hat, was standing 
on the piazza buttoning her dark gloves and looking not 
overpleased. Punctuality was one of her strong principles; 
she could believe anything of a person who was not punc- 
tual. When she had said at breakfast that they were in- 
vited for four o’clock, her mother had said, “ Isn’t thee 
rather literal ? ” but had opposed no protest when the order 
v/as given for four o’clock. Nobody was ready for fifteen 
minutes after the carriage came, and she had that amount 
of time to conquer her irritation. This was not accom- 
plished when Edward came down from his study and went 
across the lawn toward the church. 

“ Aren’t you going with us ? ” she called out. He an- 
swered, No, that he had some work to do, and later would 
pull himself down the river and join them before they came 
away. Sarah sighed; she had counted upon his going with 
them. Somehow the fine horses seemed to flatter the epis- 
copal dream; she longed to see him driven behind them. 
Presently her mother came, unruffled and calm in her plain 
black clothes, and then Leonora, a vision of loveliness in 

121 


122 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


the embroidered muslin over pink which she had told them 
about. 

“You don’t think I’m too much dressed?” she mur- 
mured anxiously, as she looked at the others. 

“ No,” cried Sarah, “ not too much dressed, but too long 
dressing.” And all the severity melted out of her eyes as 
she put her hand on Leonora’s shoulder and told her she 
looked “lovely as the day.” Mrs. Warren gave the pink 
dress a calm commendatory pat, and Leonora followed her 
into the carriage, quite innocently happy. The afternoon 
* was delicious, the horses stepped high, the carriage rolled 
smooth, the green fields were fair to see; and she was not 
above a flush of pleasure that her dress was pretty. 

When they drove in at the gates of St. Enogat she was 
not above exclaiming upon their grandeur and the length 
of the avenue which stretched before them, while Sarah gave 
a running commentary upon it all. It was an old place, 
she said, which Mr. Benthorp had bought because of the 
trees and the view, and he had pulled the house down — 
which had been a fine one in its day, and was still in good 
repair — and had built up, under a celebrated architect, a 
French chateau that was warranted to last for generations. 
And now all the generation that he had to follow him was 
a pious little daughter whose heart was set on going into a 
sisterhood, and whose only interest seemed to be slums and 
sacristies. 

He was an awfully rich man, she said, ever so many 
times a millionaire, and an important man in the world of 
finance. All this money and this importance he had gained 
for himself, for he was self-made to a degree; he was born 
here, in the outskirts of the village, on a little farm which 
his father had cleared, which was now near the railroad 
crossing. 

“ One would have thought,” said Sarah, “ that he’d never 
have wanted to think of the old place after he had made 
his money. But it seemed to have been the dream of his 
life to come back here. When he was a barefooted boy he 
used to sell blackberries at the kitchen-door of the very 
house that he pulled down for his French chateau. I sup- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


123 


pose he used to look at it when he brought his berries, and 
moon about it and think it was the finest place in the world, 
and wish he might make money enough to buy it some day. 
How curious American life is ! ” 

think it’s more curious,” said Leonora, “that he 
wanted to come back here, where he had sold berries, rather 
than go to some place where he would not be known to have 
sold them.’^ 

“ Oh, that’s America all over ! ” cried Sarah. “ The men 
here are too sharp to think they can cheat society. The 
berry-stain won’t come off, they know that. And, besides, 
there is a soi^t of egotism in having done it all themselves.” 

“ All the same, it’s nice, his wanting to come back, and 
making no pretence, don’t you think ? ” asked Leonora. 

“ Ye-es,” returned Sarah doubtfully, “ yes, perhaps it is. 
But there’s egotism at the bottom of it. If you can’t have 
ancestors, all the greater merit in being your own ancestor 
and heaping up a fortune and making a name and found- 
ing a family — just you yourself, and nobody to help you. 
Heigho ! But Amy baffles him. She won’t do anything he 
wants her to; in a pious, gentle little way, she is as strong- 
willed as he is. It doesn’t make him harsh to her ; he adores 
her, and yet he can’t understand her. Great man as he is 
in Wall Street, he is humble and perplexed when it comes 
to managing Amy. I suppose he could have bought up half 
a dozen railroads with less expenditure of brain than to get 
her to consent to having this reception to-day.” 

“ Why, thee’s making her out a horrid little thing,” said 
her mother. “And Amy isn’t that. She hasn’t had a 
mother, and she is full of enthusiasms and is a bit crude 
yet, but she will come out all right in the end.” 

“People always say that when there’s nothing else to 
say,” answered Sarah, leaning back in the carriage and look- 
ing contentedly at the grove of locust-trees through which 
they were rolling rapidly and smoothly. The smoothness 
of the roadway, the sweetness of the acacia-scented air, the 
glimpses of the yet distant blue river through the pale green 
of the trees, and the faint white of their blossoms, gave her 
pleasure, and she did not concern herself vitally with the 


124 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


contradictions of fate regarding Amy and her father. A 
little beyond, and they came upon such lawns, such group- 
ing of trees, and such a first glimpse of the stately house, 
as smote them all at the same moment with marvel at the 
art that had done it. 

“ Oh, how sweet ! ” murmured Leonora under her breath. 

“ That looks almost as if earth were good enough to stay 
in, doesn’t it?” said Mrs. Warren with a low sigh. 

It pays to get the best skill to do your work, after all,” 
said Sarah sharply. She did not like her mother’s little 
sigh. Earth was good enough to stay in, if you were “ use- 
ful” while you stayed. 

The rest of the drive was a series of beautiful sur- 
prises; the fine trees of the old estate had been well used 
and judiciously added to; vistas and avenues and groves, 
and always, through all, glimpses of the blue river and the 
repose of great stretches of lawn and melting distances of 
meadowland. 

But there was a surprise that Sarah did not enjoy, and 
that was that they were the first on the ground — the first, 
at least, of the people of consequence. To be sure, the doc- 
tor’s old horse before his old gig was being led away by a liv- 
eried servant as they drove up, and the two old-maid Tudors 
were mounting the grand marble steps with awe on their 
seamed faces; but the stately hall which they entered was 
empty of all save stately servants. In the great drawing- 
room was the young mistress of the house, not looking any 
too happy, and her fidgety, fretting duenna, who never 
added to the beauty of scenes, and Mr. Benthorp* who 
strayed in from the library, wearing a look of deep discour- 
agement, born of a wish that he had not attempted to enter- 
tain his neighbours in the face of such odds. The odds — 
that is, Amy — ^wore violet and looked lovely. It seems prob- 
able that she had an idea that violet was an ecclesiastical 
colour, as she always wore it, and always wore a cross some- 
where in sight. She had a resigned, not to say sulky, ex- 
pression, and it was difficult not to feel that she posed a 
little. It was an unconscious pose, but a pose all the same. 
The trailing, diaphanous, violet-coloured dress was a French 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


125 


creation of great merit; the huge bouquet of violets on her 
breast, through which a large cross of pearls shone half- 
hidden, had been telegraphed for from the city, because 
those from their own hothouses were a little gone off in 
their looks since the last week of hot weather. She was 
really pious, and she wanted to do the very best thing that 
could be done. She liked poor children and going to church 
and being Lady Bountiful and embroidering altar-linen. 
All these penchants had been fostered by the Eeverend Bur- 
ton, who had been the prime influence in her life from fifteen 
to seventeen, which latter age she had now just reached. 
She despised the world, and she held in low esteem those 
who did not despise it, too. As her father was one of these, 
there was danger that she would rate him below his real 
worth. The Beverend Burton had always had a saddened 
tone when he spoke of the inability of “ her poor father ” to 
see things in their true light. And she had always felt a glow 
of satisfaction in feeling that, young as she was, she saw 
them in their true light, and might in the future be the 
means of making her father see them so, too. At seventeen 
it is natural to be confident and to go in for setting the 
world right. 

Mr. Benthorp looked, indeed, harassed and disappointed 
at the slow starting of the social wheels. Was it all going 
to be like this, getting Amy to enjoy her youth? The vil- 
lage doctor and the Misses Tudor, and even the rector’s 
mother and sister, did not seem to him worth the effort he 
had made. He remembered the keen pleasures of his own 
cheap youth; he remembered the joy of those early married 
days when Amy’s mother had imparted a glow of romance 
to the little entertainments of their first pretty home. 

He was a well-made, rather handsome man, with natural 
'^'ood manners and a great deal of self-respect, but this 
situation was so vexing that he did not show to advantage. 
He patronised the doctor and the old maids a little too 
openly, and he began it with the rector’s mother and sister, 
but burnt his fingers, and promptly dropped it. Would no- 
body ever come? Was it within the scope of possibility that 
his neighbours did not mean to accept his invitation, and 
9 


126 


THE TElf^TS OF WICKEDNESS 


that Amy was not considered as good as their young sons 
and daughters? It was so out of character for him to feel 
this way that, in looking back upon it afterward, that bad 
quarter of an hour before the carriages began to roll up 
always stood out in his memory as one of the most humbling 
of his life. The recollection of the blackberries was as 
nothing to it. 

But before the carriages began to roll un, the gloom 
lightened on Amy’s face. When the doctor, with his forced 
ease of manner that toppled over into almost boisterous 
familiarity, and the questioning, frightened old maids had 
moved on, she made her way quickly to where Leonora 
stood looking out of one of the great windows. The archi- 
tect had caught the very flavour of the thing he copied. 
Leonora felt herself in France, and her eyes devoured the 
scene. 

Oh, how lovely it all is ! ” she said to her young hostess. 
^‘It is almost like being in France.” 

‘‘ Do you like it ? ” said Amy with indifference. 

“ Don’t you ? ” asked Leonora, looking at her. 

“ Oh, yes, in a way,” returned Amy. “ But it is an affec- 
tation, it is a copy, it isn’t a French chateau, after all; one 
should be sincere.” This was what the Bev. Burton had 
said, and as Leonora didn’t know the Bev. Burton, it puz- 
zled her, because it didn’t sound like the pretty little girl 
who said it. 

“ I should have liked something English, something 
Anglo-Saxon au fond, because, you know, that is what we 
all are.” 

I don’t know,” said Leonora uncomfortably. I sup- 
pose we are in a way, but I always feel as if I were 
French.” 

That’s because you were brought up in a French con- 
vent, I suppose,” said Amy, abandoning the Burton tone 
and talking naturally. “ Tell me all about it. I longed so 
to go to a convent in England, but papa wouldn’t hear of it.” 

What order was it ? ” asked Leonora, interested. 

“The Clewer sisters; they have a foundation over here; 
but I didn’t want to go to that, the class of girls isn’t quite 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


127 


what I’d care for; but at Clewer, it is all that one could 
wish; the best people send their children.” 

“I don’t know about those schools,” said Leonora, per- 
plexed. “Are they Sacre-Coeur foundations?” 

“ They are Anglican, not Roman,” returned Amy, draw- 
ing herself up slightly. 

“ Oh ! ” said Leonora, and she looked down, abashed, and 
felt how little she knew. 

“ I was glad when I heard you were coming to the rec- 
tory,” Amy went on. “I am always wanting to meet Ro- 
mans. I know so few, and I always feel we have so much 
in common that it is a pity. There are very few Anglicans 
in this parish. Father Burton had such a disheartening 
struggle, and he had to give up at last. It was a martyr- 
dom, I sometimes 'think. Such prejudice, such ignorance! 
It is inconceivable. Mr. Warren, I think, has the right 
sympathies, but he has not the backbone to declare himself. 
He is trying to mend things by compromise and by tact. 
As Father Burton says, St. Paul did not fight beasts at 
Ephesus with compromise and tact. You will see what I 
mean when you have been here longer.” 

“Yes, perhaps,” said Leonora faintly. “As you say, I 
haven’t been here long enough to judge of things.” 

“Mow,” said Amy confidentially, “dear Mrs. W'arren, 
sweet as she is, is just a Quakeress out and out. And 
Sarah I she is a Calvinist, a Lutheran, a Baptist, a Method- 
ist, rolled into one. What can you expect of a parish 
ruled by Protestant petticoats, as Father Burton says!” 

“ But they are so devoted, so useful,” murmured Leonora 
feebly, feeling with shame that it was well she hadn’t been 
called to fight with beasts at Ephesus. “ They do so much 
good and are so lovely.” 

“ Oh, I grant you ! But the faith, the faith ! That’s 
the first thing, don’t you see.” 

Leonora felt it was, but she didn’t know exactly how to 
say so without giving offence to this lovely violet-coloured 
enthusiast. They talked a little disjointedly as they walked 
away from the window. 

Every trace of discontent was gone from Amy’s face. 


128 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Her father caught sight of her, and felt profound relief, 
though he did not know what had worked the change, unless 
it was the charming girl in pink with whom she was talk- 
ing. The poor child needs companions of her own age,” 
he reflected. “ If her mother had lived she would have 
known how to make her happy.” 

Wouldn’t you like to see my oratory? ” asked Amy sud- 
denly, as they walked across the floor of the great drawing- 
room. “ You know I never show it to people, but you are 
different.” So they went out at one door and some new 
arrivals came in at another. 

Perhaps you ought not to take me now,” faltered Leo- 
nora, as she saw Mr. Benthorp looking toward them. 

Oh, no matter for those people ! ” she returned. “ They 
bore me. You must see the oratory first. The light is per- 
fect now.” So they went up the wide staircase, in full 
view of a number of new arrivals, but Amy did not look 
behind. 

The oratory was a gem, and the light was perfect at that 
hour, as she had said. She crossed herself with water from 
an exquisite henitier, and sank on her knees before the altar 
where the tabernacle stood open and void. There was a 
beautiful unlighted tabernacle lamp; the altar was a per- 
fect reproduction in miniature of that in the Lady Chapel 
of the Cathedral at Perugia; all the plunder from Italy was 
rich and abundant and in excellent condition, the whole 
assimilated by the accurate taste of the architect and the 
fervent faith of the Beverend Burton. Leonora felt more 
perplexed than ever when Amy, getting up from her knees, 
turned toward her with mute reproach in her lovely eyes. 

She has not knelt,” Amy said to herself. And I always 
kneel in her churches.” 

But while she was showing her the vestments wrung out 
of poor, impoverished Italy’s need, Amy could not resist 
asking her why she did not kneel when she came into the 
oratory. Leonora felt more than ever that the beasts of 
Ephesus would never have been the worse for }ier\ in cold 
blood to tell the girl, in her own house, in her own oratory, 
why she hadn’t knelt before that empty tabernacle! She 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


129 


never knew how she got out of it, but without offence, ap- 
parently, since, when she gained self-possession enough to 
know what Amy was talking about, she found it was about 
the Anglican rule of kneeling before empty tabernacles, be- 
cause, forsooth, people saluted the throne of a monarch when 
the throne was empty. This wisdom of the Keverend Bur- 
ton was delivered in a low whisper, as became the spot. By 
and by a faint tap came on the door — a servant to tell Miss 
Benthorp that her father asked for her. Amy impatiently 
said she would come, and then, closing the door, reverently 
began putting the vestments back on their shelves. More 
carriages had been rolling up to the door, and Leonora had 
heard with great uneasiness the growing murmur of voices 
in the hall below. At last the vestments were laid away, 
and, with more genuflections, Amy turned and they left the 
chapel. 

The two girls went down the broad staircase into a crowd 
of people. Amy was utterly unmoved by her delinquency; 
her father’s harassed looks and the flutter of her anxious 
duenna moved her not at all. She only knew she had found 
some one, who understood their value, to whom to show her 
precious playthings, and she resented being brought away 
from them. Nevertheless, she looked very pretty, and hav- 
ing a Roman ” beside her satisfled a certain craving and 
took away her usual look of discontent. 

From that time on it was people, people ; and though the 
rooms were of such grand proportions that there never 
seemed a crowd, a great many people were there. Leonora 
felt rather lonely. She could not And the Warrens, and 
those she had met did not interest her any more than they 
did Amy. 

Presently Amy brought to her a young man, bronzed 
and athletic-looking; he was in his golflng clothes, and his 
legs were admirable. Leonora smiled when Amy said, with 
delicate and rather haughty emphasis: 

The Rev. Mr. Davidge.” 

She thought Amy was absent-minded and had made a 
mistake. She cordially liked the young man, and when he 
asked her if she did not think it would be pleasant on the 


130 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


terrace, she was glad to follow him through the crowded 
hall out into the lovely grounds. 

As they passed a stout middle-aged woman near the 
doorway, he left Leonora for a moment, and rejoined her 
with an apology. 

“ It was my senior warden’s wife,” he said, “ and one has 
to toe the mark with senior wardens’ wives! Now!” with 
an intonation of throwing off shop, “ now, Miss Hunger- 
ford, isn’t this the perfection of a sunset terrace ? ” 

Leonora caught her breath. So Amy had not been absent- 
minded and misnamed him. He was a clergyman, after all. 
They walked about the terrace for a while, and then he 
proposed that they go toward the river, through an Italian 
garden which he much admired. Many people were walking 
about the grounds, and the scene was not only very pictu- 
resque, but it was all very amusing. She liked her com- 
panion and she liked looking at the people. He described 
them to her; his free-hand drawing pleased her. He evi- 
dently knew them all. Probably many of them were his 
parishioners, for he had told her he had the adjoining parish. 

Presently, hurrying up from the river, they saw Edward 
Warren. He was later than he meant to be. 

“ There comes my brother parson,” Mr. Davidge said. 

He is at one end of the ecclesiastical seesaw and I am 
at the other. My followers abhor him and his followers 
anathematise me. Nobody would dream that we belong to 
the same ecclesiastical body; but we do, and I have no 
doubt, despite our dogmatic differences, we shall wind up 
our voyage in the same ecclesiastical haven.” 

“And that is — ?” asked Leonora. 

“ Well, ^ the blue heavens above us bent ! ’ familiarly 
known as ‘ kingdom come,’ ” he returned. 

“I thought ecclesia was something about the church 
visible — isn’t it ? ” 

“ Oh, upon my word, if you pin me down to accuracy ! 
But one is apt to be vague about what one doesn’t know 
anything, don’t you think so? And what do you or I, let 
alone all the theologians alive or dead, know about the 
future life? Nothing, absolutely nothing.” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


131 


“ The dead ones know, perhaps,” said Leonora thought- 
fully. 

“ Then I wish they’d send us word,” he returned, with a 
hard look coming over his handsome face. They were stand- 
ing at the entrance to the Italian garden, and he leaned 
forward on his elbows upon the disc of a sun-dial that 
looked toward the sunset, where the clouds were gorgeous 
at the moment. “ They might tell us,” he said below his 
breath, after a moment, as he turned away. 

“ They' have told us,” thought Leonora, though she did 
not speak. 

^^Ah, Warren, you are late, my brother,” he said, as 
Edward came up the path on which they were standing. 

“1 am afraid I am,” he returned, looking at his watch. 
“ Alas, I made a miscalculation. Shall I have time to re- 
trieve myself ? ” and he hurried on. 

That’s a good fellow,” said Mr. Davidge, as his eyes 
followed Warren. “But, heavens, what a bondage to be in! 
Hard work, hard life, a maximum of miseries, a minimum 
of pleasures.” 

“ He looks tired all the time, doesn’t he ? ” said Leonora, 
looking after him, too. His tall, spare figure, in a strict 
clerical suit, with coat to his knees, with Koman collar and 
with a clerical felt hat, had been such a contrast to her 
companion’s knickerbockers and golf suit as they stood to- 
gether for a moment by the sun-dial, that Leonora said to 
herself that the Anglican Church certainly hadn’t any uni- 
form, external or internal. 

While they walked slowly back toward the house, dis- 
cussing the hard-worked Edward, they saw Sarah approach- 
ing, and with her a tall, graceful, youngish-looking woman 
in black, with gray hair, a pink-and-white skin, and deep 
dimples. She was so striking a contrast in appearance to 
the “useful” Sarah in her plain clothes that Leonora was 
interested. 

“O mine enemy, hast thou found me?” murmured Mr. 
Davidge below his breath. 

“Who is she?” 

“ Oh, she is Miss Angelica Perkins, a very catholic per- 


132 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


son, as well as a very well-bred one. She swears allegiance 
to the recently dismissed Burton, and she cannot think of 
me without pain or speak of me without rancour. In the sad 
social bondage of to-day she has to acknowledge my exist- 
ence with a few civil words when we are obliged to meet, 
but you will see what constraint she puts upon herself not 
to tell me what she thinks of me and my ecclesiastical short- 
comings.” 

Sarah saw Leonora and waved her hand to her. In a 
moment Miss Perkins was presented, and Leonora was met 
with dimpling smiles. Mr. Davidge was treated to iced 
dimples and as few words as comported with good manners. 

“ Let us walk back to the house together,” Miss Perkins 
said, and with gentle selfishness took possession of Leonora, 
and left the parson to Sarah. 

Eomans ” had as great fascination for her as for Amy. 
She had been longing to meet Leonora ever since she had 
heard of her coming. Homans were rather rare hereabouts, 
and she did not want to miss this occasion. It is true she 
never found them very sympathetic, and she always insisted 
that they were very ignorant; but, all the same, she never 
omitted an opportunity to talk to one and to show her true 
friendliness of spirit. “ They should never have a chance 
to say they were not met cordially,” she averred. “ It is 
only a question of time when the two branches of the church 
come to an understanding. One would like to feel one had 
helped it on a little.” 

With this high purpose she engrossed Leonora and kept 
the agreeable young parson talking about county charities 
with Sarah in the rear. He did not like the arrangement; 
the pink sunset seemed to him out of harmony with en- 
dowed hospital beds and adjourned missionary meetings. 

Presently they turned into a broad straight walk, bor- 
dered with box, that ran sloping from the house to the river. 
There was a circle half way to the river, where there were 
seats and a high boxwood hedge. Here were seated two 
delicate-looking old women and a young man who, sitting 
beside them, was leaning forward, his arms on his knees, 
telling them something with gestures that made them laugh. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


133 


Leonora and her companion half stopped at the entrance. 
It made rather a pretty picture. The young man’s back 
was toward the newcomers. The two delicate old faces were 
turned toward him and toward them, and were lighted up 
with smiles and admiration; beyond, the rosy sunset tinged 
the river with pink and gold as it flowed between its green 
banks. The three were so engrossed that for a moment or 
two they did not see that they were not alone in their leafy 
retreat. Then a little startled look crossed one old face and 
communicated itself to its sister’s, and from thence to the 
young man’s. He rose quickly and turned toward the in- 
truders. Leonora gave a low exclamation; the young man 
flushed and lifted his hat. 

“I — I didn’t know you — you weren’t — at Newport,” he 
said rather awkwardly. 

‘‘No; I’m here,” she returned, confused; and then they 
both laughed a little at this betise. “You see, I got a 
reprieve,” she said, regaining herself. “Papa let me off 
from society till next winter.” 

“ That was a good game,” he said. “ This is a hundred 
times ahead of Newport.” 

“ Isn’t it ? I am very happy about it.” 

In the meanwhile, the graceful Perkins and the abrupt 
Sarah and the bored young parson were all closing in around 
the two old ladies, who were evidently great favourites with 
their neighbours. They were very cordial and talked a good 
deal, but they kept an attentive eye, all the same, on the 
young people who had met so unexpectedly, and who were 
still talking to each other. At last, while Miss Perkins and 
the parson and one of the old ladies grew interested in some 
village matter, the other one put a small hand gently on 
Sarah’s arm and half drew her toward her. 

“ Who is it that Paul is talking to ? ” she whispered. 

“ That ? ” queried Sarah. “ Why, it’s Leonora Hunger- 
ford, don’t you know? She’s just come home from Europe; 
she’s been abroad ever since her mother died, a good many 
years ago.” 

“You don’t mean — Oscar Hungerford’s daughter?” 

“ Exactly ! ” 


134 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“ I don’t read the scandal columns in the papers,” said 
the gentle old lady, but, out of the world as we are, things 
sift through to us in one way and another. Dear, dear, and 
that is Oscar Hungerf ord’s daughter ! ” She had her lor- 
gnon at her eyes and was looking at her and faintly shaking 
her head. And she’s pretty, too, very pretty. I used to 
know the mother slightly. I wonder how she happens to be 
here ? Is she stopping in this house ? ” Then, before Sarah 
could answer her, she went on musingly and with an anxious 
contraction of the forehead as she continued her scrutiny 
of the unconscious Leonora : She is very pretty. I wonder 
where Paul can have met her? He’s only just come back, 
you know.” 

^‘Why, Leonora is here with us, you see. I felt as if 
I’d told you, as if everybody knew. Her mother and mine 
were the dearest friends, and mother wrote to ask Mr. Hun- 
gerford to let her come to us and stay a long, long time.” 

Greater anxiety clouded the usually placid face. “ Your 
mother is always so good, so charitable,” she murmured. 

“ But it isn’t a case of being charitable, dear Miss Fair- 
fax,” broke in Sarah. “ Leonora isn’t a bit what you’d 
think her father’s child would be. She’s perfectly ignorant 
of the world, and though there isn’t much difference in our 
ages, she is a great deal younger than I am in most mat- 
ters. I don’t think she knows anything of this talk about 
her father, and I hope she won’t have to know it.” 

“ Surely not, if it can be helped,” murmured Miss Fair- 
fax doubtfully. She was wondering if Mrs. Warren could 
have been deceived by her great affection for the mother 
into judging too leniently of the daughter, and of imposing, 
unconsciously, her judgment upon Sarah. But — the rectory 
as a home for Oscar Hungerford’s daughter, fresh from 
twelve years of life in foreign lands ! The good name of the 
rectory was precious in her eyes, and then Paul — Paul, the 
idol of his two old aunts — ^what if it meant forbidding him 
to come to them through the summer! He was talking to 
her still, he was looking as he didn’t usually look when he 
talked to girls. Her quick imagination took fire; she saw 
in a flash that they should have to go away to the seaside 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


135 


for two or three months, that they should have to close the 
house till this strange girl went away. Oscar Hungerford’s 
daughter and Paul ! Oh ! She got up restlessly ; she longed 
to go, to get Paul safely home, to talk it over with her sister 
behind closed doors. 

The group, once disintegrated by the frightened old lady, 
broke up. Somebody presented Leonora to her and to her 
sister in a casual way. The elder sister. Miss Fairfax, who 
had not caught the name, told her they should come to see 
her in a day or two, and then Leonora and the others went 
on toward the house, leaving the Fairfax family to resume 
their seats and finish their interrupted talk. 

The young parson, by a rapid flank movement, got next 
to Leonora, and Miss Perkins had, with much regret, to 
see her Koman escape, and to walk slowly to the house in 
the company of Sarah, whom she did not find sympathetic 
at the best of times. 

“ Those old women are the salt of the earth. They are 
elect souls,” the parson was saying to Leonora. “ When I 
see the turmoil and evil of these two parishes I think of 
them, and I renew my faith in the stability of things. The 
fire of God couldn’t consume us, root and branch, while 
those two women lived.” 

And Mrs. Warren — ” said Leonora. 

“Yes, and Mrs. Warren, though I don’t know her as 
well. Why is it that people have to be old before they give 
you that feeling ? ” 

“ I don’t think they have to be old before they give you 
that feeling. There is Edward Warren, he gives it to me— 
with this difference, that he does not rest me when I look 
at him, as his mother does. I feel that he is holy, and — 
well, don’t you know— that— that he is chosen of God and 
all that, but I think he is suffering, I think he isn’t there 
yet ” 

“Heaven knows what he is suffering about,” said Dav- 
idge, half impatiently. “ He’s got as good prospects as any 
man I know, in the Church or out of it. He has great 
talent; he’s a rising man. His health is good, if he’d only 
take care of it. His mother and sister make a charming 


136 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


home for him. He could have an assistant any moment — 
he could have two if he wanted them, for the matter of 
that; the congregation are proud of him and rich enough 
to give him anything he asks for. Upon my word, while I 
didn’t understand his predecessor Burton, I understand 
Warren even less. For Burton was an idiot pure and sim- 
ple, and Warren is a man of parts.” 

The speaker had pulled a twig from some shrubbery that 
he passed, and with it he switched the hedge along their 
path. Commend me to common-sense,” he said testily, 
and a level head.” 

There was a pause, while Leonora was thinking to her- 
self that Edward had not seemed to her to be particularly 
wanting in these necessary gifts. 

He’s got some sort of a bee in his bonnet,” he resumed 
after a while. “ I hope I may be pardoned if I do him 
injustice, but it has seemed to me sometimes — I’ve gone 
over the matter carefully, endeavouring to classify the in- 
sect — that it is only another variety of the species that has 
been buzzing round in poor Burton’s empty pate.” He 
gave the last of the low pines that flanked the entrance to 
the hall a swish with his privet twig, and then threw it 
away as they mounted the steps, followed by Sarah and Miss 
Perkins, who were close behind. 

As they drove home, Sarah said to Leonora : “ Where did 
you ever know Paul Fairfax? His aunt wondered whether 
you had met him abroad ? ” 

Leonora said she had met him on the ship coming over, 
and again at Hempstead just before she came away. She 
had never enlarged on that visit to Hempstead; she could 
not bear to think of it, much less to talk of it. 

“ The Fairfax ladies are our best card,” said Sarah, 
pulling up the collar of her jacket, for the air was 
getting fresh and the pale evening star was shining out 
already. 

Comberf ord wouldn’t be Comberf ord without them ; I 
like them better than anybody else in the place, and I fancy 
everybody feels the same. I don’t think they have a fault 
between them, scarcely a foible. Unless — ^well, yes, unless 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


137 


it be a foible to adore Paul. Perhaps that saves them from 
dead perfection, which is always unsympathetic.” 

“ Why do they adore him ? ” asked Leonora. 

“Well, he^s the only thing that isn’t old in the Fairfax 
connection. He’s the only son of their only brother, and 
they’ve had a hand in bringing him up. He’s young, and 
he’s something to speculate about and to plan about — some- 
body to leave their silver to, and their old china. They can’t 
have any heart about leaving him their money, for he’s got 
more than enough of that of his own, and mints untold 
coming to him from his father. But family souvenirs and 
relics of the past money can’t buy, and they can save them 
up for him and so give him a pleasure that nobody else can 
give him.” 

“ I wonder if he cares a great deal for silver teapots and 
things ? ” said Leonora musingly. “ Men of his age don’t, 
generally ; do they ? ” 

“ The Fairfaxes are conservative people,” said Mrs. W ar- 
ren ; “ they have led very quiet lives. I think they all have 
a good deal of family feeling.” 

“And Paul’s mother,” pursued Sarah, “Paul’s mother 
won’t interfere with any of the family interests. She’s all 
given up to charities. She doesn’t care a ha’penny for any 
of the Fairfax traditions. She’s Low Church and dictatorial 
and narrow-minded. I think Paul finds himself more at 
home in his aunts’ house here than in the great big place 
in the Pennsylvania mountains where his mother spends 
her life domineering it over the colliers’ families and having 
her own way — with a big W. A great bell rings at half- 
past six every morning and they all come trooping into 
something that she calls a chapel, and she reads the morn- 
ing service to them and expounds the lessons for the day 
to them and plays on the organ for them, and leads them in 
singing and, I’m afraid, in praying. She is quite equal to 
extempore prayers.” 

“Come, come, Sarah, isn’t this a flight of fancy?” 

“Ho, no, mother, not at all. I’ve forgotten just who 
told me, but I know it is exactly so. And her husband is 
the kind that doesn’t interfere. He lets her have her way 


138 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


in non-essentials, and only pulls her up with a round turn 
when she gets meddling with the essential matters. That’s 
what happened about Paul, you know.” 

Sarah, this borders on gossip ! ” 

^‘NTot at all, mother. Miss Fairfax told me this herself, 
not in the same words, of course, but exactly the same mean- 
ing. Mrs. Fairfax wanted Paul to have tutors at home, 
or, failing that, to have him sent to Trinity College. She’d 
have been so glad not to have him go to college at all! 
She’s afraid of everything for him. But his father took a 
stand and would have him sent to Harvard, and after that 
to a German university, and then had him travel for two 
or three years. I think he’s been around the world, or 
something. Oh, Paul hasn’t been mollied, and I hope he’s 
a nice fellow, for his aunts’ sake as well as for his own.” 


CHAPTER III 


T he next day the Fairfax ladies called at the rectory. 
Sarah and Leonora were out, and it was not until the 
return call that they met. The old house charmed 
Leonora. It was very old, perhaps a little ostentatiously so; 
but it was like going back a hundred and fifty years to pass 
from one room to another, filled with pieces of heavy old 
mahogany furniture that had never, perhaps, been moved six 
feet from the place they had occupied when the post-boy 
brought the news from Valley Forge and Bunker Hill. The 
garden was laid out as it had been laid out when there was a 
lack of men to do it because of the conscription in the dark 
days of the long struggle. As Mrs. Warren said, the Fair- 
faxes were conservative and only asked to be let alone and 
live as their fathers had lived before them. Changes were 
abhorrent to them, and money could not buy their fealty. 
Money had come tumbling in upon some of them so fast of 
late, however, that it seemed a question whether the policy 
must not be changed. 

Leonora’s welcome was cordial; it seemed probable that 
something had been said by the taciturn Paul that had had 
the effect of assuaging his aunts’ alarm. 

They had afternoon tea on a spindle-legged table where 
George Washington had once had his; they wandered through 
rooms where roses and mignonette in priceless old china bowls 
gave out delicate odours. They saw Paul’s picture in oil and 
in crayon and in pastel at many ages and in many attitudes. 
They were taken into his den, where there were no perfumes 
of roses and mignonette, but a good honest smell of cigar- 
smoke and of leather. This room was the only one that had 
suffered radical change in the house since their great-grand- 

139 


140 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


father’s time. It had been the room in which he had kept his 
papers and tools and where the men who worked on the farm 
came to be paid off, and there was an old corner cupboard 
in which there used to be fishing-tackle, dried ears of corn, 
and packages of seeds, and a good deal of dust. When Paul 
came home from college one Christmas he found this room 
enlarged and renovated. The comer cupboard held his books 
in cabinet bindings ; the old desk where his great-grandfather 
had paid off the farm-hands on Saturday nights had been 
polished and done over and made fine with the big horn ink- 
stand tipped with silver of one ancestor, the sand-sifter of 
another, and the candlestick and snuffer-tray of a third. 
There was a big fireplace with high brass andirons and a 
great round table and a leather-covered sofa and some deep, 
comfortable chairs of the same age. A door opened out on 
to the lawn with one large plate glass in it, but the windows 
had their original small panes and were uncurtained. It was 
still a very plain room and did not speak luxurious tastes in 
its present occupant, but Miss Fairfax said her nephew liked 
it and spent many hours in it, and it saved the parlours from 
tobacco-smoke. There were a great many books and maga- 
zines on the big table, but evidently Paul had been away some 
days, for everything was tidied up ” and the cigar-smoke 
was stale. 

The old ladies did not talk about Paul otherwise than to 
mention that this was his room and that they did not like 
tobacco-smoke in the parlours, but nobody could help seeing 
that every inch of it was precious to them — as precious to 
them as Amy’s oratory was to her, perhaps. 

I like them,” thought Leonora as they walked home 
through the broad village street under the elms. “ They are 
like the nuns, and the house feels as if it had been conse- 
crated.” But aloud she said if they didn’t spoil their nephew 
she should be very much surprised. 

It was the third of July. Leonora, in the runabout, was 
waiting before the post-office for Sarah, who, within, was 
sending a registered letter to a Girls’ Friendly ” girl. The 
man had just brought Leonora a package of letters and had 
then gone to the horse’s head. She had dropped the reins 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


141 


and was eagerly running over the addresses of the letters. 
Finally, letting the others fall into her lap, she opened one 
that had a foreign post-mark. She was reading it with 
absorbed interest when, from different points of the compass 
and not seeing each other, the Keverend Davidge and young 
Fairfax came up to the trap at the same moment to speak 
to her. 

The village post-office was not amiss architecturally; two 
big trees shaded it, under which the trap stood. Leonora in 
her pretty summer clothes made a charming picture as she 
read her letter. It was the hour of the arrival of the morn- 
ing mail and there were a number of carriages waiting. Paul 
had made his way under difficulty between two horses^ en- 
countering heads, and the parson had seemed to be wading 
through a sea of senior wardens’ wives and daughters to get 
to Leonora. And when they got there she did not see them. 
Paul looked uncomfortable, and, turning, went on into the 
office; but the parson stood his ground and lifting his hat 
with a little sweeping gesture, got her attention. 

^^You wouldn’t look up,” he said. ‘‘Paul Fairfax got 
tired of waiting and has gone away.” 

She coloured a little and put her letters into her pocket. 
“ I’m glad you had more time to spare,” she said. “ I don’t 
see why anybody should be in a hurry in Comberford, do 
you ? ” 

“Nobody is but men just down from the city like Fair- 
fax, who have been breathing dollars and cents all the week 
and are subject to a sort of unconscious cerebral speculation 
all the time.” 

Edward at this moment crossed the road with a bundle 
of letters and papers in his hand. He did not see them and 
seemed rather in a hurry. “ There’s somebody else,” said 
Davidge, “who doesn’t seem to loaf exactly.” 

“ Edward ! ” called out Leonora, “ I’ve got the letters.” 

“ All right,” he said, holding up the package in his hand. 
“ I’ll put these in the box, and come and get them.” 

“ ‘ Flora and the country green ’ do not seem to have en- 
tered into his being, so to speak,” said Davidge in a low voice, 
looking after him. 

10 


142 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“ I don’t like to see him look so tired always,” said Leo- 
nora with a slight contraction of the forehead. But in a 
hioment he came out with Paul Fairfax, smiling a little and 
talking to him with a relaxed expression. “ You can see he 
worries about his letters till they are actually off. He is 
always anxious about something. If he were well he wouldn’t 
feel so, though he certainly has too much to do,” Leonora 
went on in a low tone. 

The game isn’t worth the candle,” muttered Davidge. 

Paul and Edward came up to the carriage, and while they 
were talking with Leonora Sarah came out and joined them. 

I am glad you are here,” she said to Paul and the min- 
ister. “ It will save me the bother of writing two notes. I 
was going to tell you that we always have had a family picnic 
on. the Fourth of July ever since I can remember. Two of 
the servants and all of the family and no one else ! ” 

“ Well, were you going to write and tell us so, so as to 
create rancour in our hearts because you were going to have 
a picnic to-morrow and weren’t going to invite us ? ” asked 
the parson. 

No,” said Sarah sedately as she got into the runabout. 

No, I was going to tell you we are proposing to invite you 
both, though we have never asked anybody outside the house 
before — never! ” 

“ Why this letting up on rules ? ” said Davidge. He was 
leaning on the wheel of the carriage and the dust had come 
off on his clothes. What has happened once will happen 
again. He knew it would brush off, so he did not mind. 

Well,” said Sarah, “ Miss Hungerford has to be amused, 
you see. We have never had her before. You can’t have fine 
young women from abroad stopping with you and not do 
anything for them, can you ? ” 

I am glad you feel so about it,” said Davidge. “ I shall 
hope to benefit by your enlarged social activity — beginning 
with the picnic ! ” 

“Not necessarily,” said Sarah, with a sharp little nod. 
“ The picnic to-morrow is an experiment. If you rise to it 
you may look for more as the summer goes on, but not 
otherwise.” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


143 


Is it an all-day picnic, or an afternoon-tea picnic, or a 
moonlight picnic, or a picnic where yon go for a drive and 
get home and eat yonr meal, whatever it may be, like a 
Christian, in the dining-room ? ” 

In the dining-room ! ” exclaimed Sarah. “ Why, that 
wouldn’t be a picnic at all. Ho, this is a clear family holi- 
day — servants and all. The things are cooked the day before 
and we go at ten o’clock and don’t get back till nearly eight. 
We take it very seriously. It is very democratic, and I don’t 
want you to go in for it without knowing all.” 

“ It isn’t fair to discourage them,” said Leonora. “ The 
things to eat are going to be very good; the cook has prom- 
ised to let me help her make the sponge cake this afternoon.” 

Oh, hush, Leonora ! You are enfant terrible. There will 
be other cake, you understand. Leonora has to be amused, 
you know, and if making cake amuses her, far be it from me 
to say she shall not make it.” 

Oh, I am sure I’m not discouraged. Let it be under- 
stood I accept, whatever Fairfax does about it,” said Davidge. 

I don’t want any doubt about my meaning,” said Paul. 
“ I accepted without reservation in my mind even before I 
heard of the cake.” 

“ Then it’s all settled,” said Sarah. “ And you’ll be at 
our house at ten o’clock to-morrow if it doesn’t rain.” 

“ I thought picnics were co-operative,” said Paul. “ Can’t 
I do anything ? Are you all right about horses and traps ? ” 

^^I think so,” returned Sarah confidently. “You see, if 
Am y goes I shall ask her for the wagonette ; and she can take 
six in that. And there’ll be this trap that carries two besides 
the man ; and we’ll get Brewster’s stage for the servants and 
the baskets. The only trouble might be if Mr. Benthorp goes 
— there won’t be any place for him, but he can take one of 
his own horses and follow us, don’t you see? And mother 
and Amy’s duenna can come in the runabout ; and if Angelica 
Perkins should come— but I know she won’t. Oh, it will be 
all right, you’ll see ! ” and Sarah nodded her curt little nod 
of confidence in the success of what she undertook. 

“ How,” cried Davidge, “ you told us — and we accepted on 
that basis— that it was to be domestic and democratic; and 


144 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


here you bring in possibilities of Wall Street magnates and 
bints of religious orders and anxious duennas. Pardon me 
for saying so, but I don’t think the thing will hold together.” 

At least,” said Paul, “ let me bring my horses, and then 
there’ll be plenty of room if the nuns and the Wall Street 
men don’t agree in close quarters. I can order the horses 
brought round at ten o’clock, and if they’re not wanted 
there’s no harm done and the man can take them back.” 

“ I don’t know but that’s a good suggestion,” said Sarah, 
considering. “Yes, if it’s no trouble. Yes — bring them. 
Good-bye.” 

“ Edward, you won’t ride ? ” said Leonora as she gathered 
up the reins. “ The cake is going to be a dream; a demainJ’ 

And the mare started off briskly, leaving the three men 
looking after them. 


CHAPTEK IV 


T he next day was a beautiful fresh July day. At ten 
o’clock there was quite a cavalcade before the rectory 
gate. The servants and the baskets trundled off before 
the others in Brewster’s old stage. In the wagonette were 
Miss, Angelica Perkins and Amy, and Edward and Davidge, 
and the duenna — ^who would not consent to leave her charge 
— and Sarah. Mrs. Warren was disposed of in the runabout 
with Mr. Benthorp to drive, and Leonora had climbed up to 
the dizzy height of Paul’s trap. This had come about in a 
very simple way. Paul had asked her if she wouldn’t drive 
with him and she had said she’d like it of all things if 
Sarah wouldn’t mind; but Sarah had planned for her to go 
in the wagonette, she rather feared. Paul engaged to make 
it all right with Sarah, and he came back and announced that 
it was all right, so Leonora climbed up without further par- 
ley and they were off a little after the others. Paul’s 
horses were very good ones, and he knew all the roads about 
Comberford. 

“You don’t think this was selfish of me, do you?” she 
asked. “ I hate wagonettes. You feel as if you wanted to see 
out of the window at your back and you are always dodging 
to look out between the people’s heads opposite, and it ends 
in your seeing nothing but them and nothing of what you’re 
passing.” 

“ Exactly. They’re only fit for sending to trains and such 
things,” answered Paul. “ For a long drive they’re very tire- 
some.” 

“ This is so nice,” murmured Leonora. “ Do you know, 
I’ve never been in a high thing like this before. I hope it 
isn’t selfish. There ! ” as they passed the wagonette, “ you 

145 


146 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


do see they don’t like it, don’t you? Even Sarah didn’t look 
pleased. Oh, Amy must come back with you. How many 
miles is it ? Eleven ? Why, they won’t have anything left to 
say to each other before they are half way there! Mr. 
Havidge looked so bored ; I thought he would be glad to talk 
to Amy. And Edward — why, he must be preparing his ser- 
mon for to-morrow,” she added, glancing back. “ He would 
have given anything to have got out of going, I could see. 
But this is a family tradition, this picnic.” 

“ Family traditions are generally a nuisance,” said Paul ; 
“ but this one’s all right, and I’m sure most of theirs are.” 

“Yes, I’m glad enough to be here. I think they are, 
every one of them, as Sarah said about the picnic, domestic 
and democratic — the best kind of both.” 

“ They’re wholesome, and the right sort,” said Paul with 
emphasis. “Hot like that Meadowburn lot.” 

“ Ho,” said Leonora faintly, “ not like them at all.” 

And then a silence fell. She was always frightened and 
uncertain when there was any allusion to that Meadowburn 
episode. She did not know how he felt about it, but she 
knew she felt ashamed of it and wondered how she had had 
the hardihood to do what she did — she who hadn’t the 
courage to tell Amy why she didn’t kneel down in her 
oratory! The more she thought of it the more she was 
afraid it was because she was angry. 

There was a long silence as they drove quickly along 
through the fresh, clear air, scented with clover and grape, 
warm with sunshine and cool with dew. Ah, well! It was 
not worth while spoiling her drive with thinking over what 
she couldn’t help. And so after a while they began to talk 
again. 

It was weather sans reproche. The rain of the evening 
before had renewed the face of the earth. Every leaf and 
every blade of grass seemed at the perfect beginning of its 
perfection; birds sang full-throated melody; a pulse of hope 
seemed beating in the heart of everything. The woods 
through which they passed were giving out leafy damp 
scents: scents of sweet-briar, sweet-fern, grape in blossom. 
And when they came out of the woods upon great stretches 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


147 


of green meadow they caught the blue sparkle of the river 
in the distance. Once or twice there was a hilltop upon 
which they stopped to gaze out over the widespread verdant 
farms, a white village below them with a mill on the stream, 
and a white church-steeple showing through the trees. 

When Leonora praised it all, Paul said. Yes, it was a nice 
country. He’d always liked it ever since he was a boy, and he 
sometimes felt he’d like it for a home. There was something 
peaceful about it, and taken all in all one might do worse. 

“ It is your home in a way, isn’t it ? Haven’t your people 
lived here always ? ” 

Ye-es,” said Paul reluctantly, some of them have al- 
ways been on the old place.” And then he began to talk of 
something else. The reason for his reserve was that he had 
an impression — very annoying to him and having some foun- 
dation in fact — that a few of their neighbours thought the 
Fairfaxes inclined to value themselves on “ their claims of 
long descent ” ; and as a sturdy American he despised this, 
and as a travelled man he saw that antiquity in this new 
land is crude youth in other lands. Leonora felt a little 
chilled that he would not talk about what interested her: 
the old house and the Dresden china aunts ; but the morning 
soon melted the slight chill, and they talked with less reserve 
than was habitual to either. 

It proved to be for the others a two-hours’ drive ; for them 
but an hour and a quarter. The rendezvous was a large 
grove of pines on a hill through which the southwest wind 
was blowing, and with the night’s dampness and the morn- 
ing’s sun the perfumes of Araby the blest promised to be 
their portion. 

While his man led the horses away Paul and Leonora 
wandered about under the trees on the slippery carpet of 
pine-needles and looked out over the broad pastures and 
white villages below them, watching through the windings of 
the road for the rest of the cavalcade. Soon they caught 
sight of the wagonette, then, following closely, the runabout, 
and far behind crawled Brewster’s stage with the servants. 

Half way up the hill Edward and Davidge had got out 
to ease the horses’ legs and to stretch their own. The duenna 


148 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


soon called a halt and alighted, but so far behind that the 
two men did not see her. She had a fad about animals and 
felt she was very meritorius in sparing the horses the 
burden of her small and dried and scantily covered anatomy. 

So few people think she murmured as she got out. 
Sarah was longing for a little exercise, but disdained to be 
coerced, and stayed in the wagonette. 

The two men returned the waving of Leonora’s scarf be- 
fore they were near enough to be heard. 

“ There were too many in the wagonette,” she said to 
Paul. “ I am afraid they’re very tired. We ought to have 
known better. We must arrange differently going back.” 

Yes,” said Paul matter-of-factly. “ Let Davidge drive 
Miss Amy in the runabout, and let Miss Sarah get in the 
seat behind. Then there will only be the rector and Mr. 
Benthorp and the duenna and Mrs. Warren for the wagon- 
ette. Oh, yes ! and Miss Angelica. But she’ll like that. She 
can talk to Warren about the Catholic movement all she 
wants to, and he’s got to listen.” 

Oh ! ” said Leonora, Edward must not be bored. He 
didn’t want to come, and it’s only fair he should be consid- 
ered now he has come. Just leave it to me 1 ” she said, start- 
ing down the hill to meet them. 

^^But you are to drive home with me, you know,” he 
said, following her. She did not answer, and at that moment 
they met the two men. 

Were you very bored? ” she said, fluttering up to them. 
‘‘Was the duenna a serious trial? I have been so worried.” 

“ Well, Miss Hungerford, you don’t look it,” exclaimed 
Davidge. “ I’m free to say I wish I could always be sure of 
taking my anxieties in the same spirit.” 

“ Oh, but,” said Leonora, “ I knew I couldn’t do any- 
thing ” 

“And so you fell back on enjoying your drive,” said 
Edward, taking off his hat and fanning himself as they all 
stood looking down at the slow wagonette winding its way 
up the steep road. When it came to a stop beside them they 
made a feint of merriment, but the faces of Sarah and Amy 
and Angelica Perkins were a little flushed, and when they 


TB.t TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


149 


got out they had the mien of people who had been for a long 
time in a cramped position. It was difficult to be merry with 
them. Amy looked the least pleased of the three. 

“ What a road ! ” she said, shaking out her flounces. 
“ Why did nobody tell us ? The wagonette was the last thing 
to come in.” 

“ Why, who ever imagined that you didn’t know Koger’s 
hill and how steep it is ! ” cried Sarah. Miss Perkins looked 
superior to all this and mentally fell back upon some maxims 
for devout people living in the world. It steadied her to 
think how much better she was bearing this discipline than 
the rector’s sister, who was at heart a Protestant. 

!N’ow, one does not get up picnics for discipline, and for 
the first half-hour Sarah felt disgusted with her effort. Why 
had she asked these outside people? If they had just kept 
to their own household they would have been all right. Mrs. 
Warren alone looked undisturbed; Edward no more anxious 
than he always did. Mr. Benthorp wandered away into the 
woods vaguely depressed by the flush on Amy’s face. The 
duenna, when she got panting up the hill, was profuse in 
her offers of service, but at the moment there was nothing 
to be done and she talked a good deal instead. 

The stage at last arrived, and everybody had some advice 
to give about where the table should be, and where the fire. 
This diversion was the beginning of restored harmony: the 
servants certainly were happy and didn’t mind if their betters 
weren’t, and went at their work cordially. The soft wind 
among the pines and the great calm stretches of meadow 
and woodland below them had their effect even upon Amy; 
and when the feast was ready she ran forward and waved 
her handkerchief to call her father with an amiability that 
gave him deep satisfaction. 

“ She really seems to be enjoying it,” the impotent great 
man of Wall Street said to himself. “Being with these 
young people must be good for her. We will get up a picnic 
or something every week.” 

Half an hour ago he had been asking himself gloomily 
why in thunder people got up picnics. But Amy was enjoy- 
ing herself now, and he could see why they got them up. 


150 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


She’ll drop that sisterhood business altogether, I am con- 
vinced,” he mused as he watched her, pretty as a fairy, flit- 
ting about with cups of coffee and plates of salad. And after 
the repast was over, and the men all lay stretched upon the 
grass smoking, he was the life of the party. He told stories 
about the neighbourhood which were keenly enjoyed by the 
two clergymen and by Paul, who had been almost brought 
up at Comberford; and Sarah and Mrs. Warren were 
familiar enough with the place to understand every local 
characteristic. Miss Perkins walked apart and mused upon 
the wrongs of the misunderstood Burton, who had been ban- 
ished from these scenes by bigotry and prejudice in high 
places. Amy seemed for the time to forget this diocesan 
martyr. She was pleased to see her father the centre of the 
group and to hear the laughs that followed his anecdotes. 
He was generally silent and preoccupied when she saw him, 
and this was a new departure. Why didn’t he laugh and tell 
good stories at home? she wondered. She nestled close up 
beside him as he lay stretched on the grass with his back 
against a tree; her warm little hand pushed under his arm 
made this probably the most satisfying hour he had known 
for many a long month. 

After all, the rectory picnic that had begun so lugubri- 
ously was redeeming itself. Sarah whispered to Leonora, 
who sat with her in a hammock : “ I should say the day 
was saved, if it weren’t for Angelica Perkins. If she’d only 
go to sleep, like the duenna ! ” 

The duenna had gone to sleep and made no secret of it. 

Paul sauntered up to the hammock, when Sarah slipped 
out of it for a moment to run off and give an order to a 
servant. “ W ouldn’t you like to see a pretty spring there is 
over there toward the cliff ? ” he said. ‘‘ It isn’t far — there’s 
a nice view.” 

“ Oh, yes ! ” Leonora exclaimed ; I’d like to go of all 
things.” She picked up a light wrap and her parasol and fol- 
lowed him. They walked along under the great trees, with 
a soft wind blowing in their faces and talked about — about 
all sorts of very insignificant things. But everything they 
talked about seemed in a way very significant to them. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


151 


The grassy road led through a forest and came out sud- 
denly on a sort of cliff that gave them a view over miles and 
miles of green country and ended in some blue hills dim 
against the horizon. A little way back from the edge of the 
cliff, under some trees, there was a tinkling rivulet that 
made its way out from between two rocks and then, because 
of a sort of dip in the land, meandered away into the forest 
again. 

I used to think that was a very wonderful spring when I 
was a boy,” said Paul; “I believe I thought I had discov- 
ered it.” 

“ Did you use to come here often when you were a boy ? ” 
asked Leonora. 

“ Once a year or so, I suppose. It was a great treat and 
we talked about it for days before.” 

After they had looked a long while at the view from the 
cliff they went back and sat down a little way from the 
spring, Paul arranging a seat for her on a fallen log with a 
tree back of her to lean against, while he sat on the grass 
beside her. 

“You haven’t told me,” he said rather awkwardly, “how 
you like America.” 

“ That’s the first question you ever asked me, do you 
remember? — at dinner at IVTrs. Pelletreau’s that night.’ 

’ “ Yes, I remember,” said Paul. “ I’ve been waiting for 

the answer ever since.” 

“Well,” returned Leonora deliberately, “I’d like to an- 
swer it, if I were quite sure I knew.” 

“I thought,” said Paul, “I thought you were the sort 
that knew what you liked and what you didn t always. 

“ Oh, anything in reason ! But when you seem to step 
into a new world every time you get on a train of cars, al- 
most every time you cross the sill of the door to go out 

“ It must be rather staggering.” 

“And when nobody gives you the same explanation of 
anything; and when everything’s as new to you as if you 
were a baby! I’m ashamed of myself, but then I don’t see 
how I could have known. If you could think how quiet the 
life was at the convent, how regular, how sure; it all went 


152 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


the same way, everybody thought the same things were right, 
everybody thought the other things were wrong — and here! 
Why, it’s pulling yourself up every minute, asking yourself 
what is right, what is wrong — and nobody to tell you any- 
thing. I felt alone and frightened at first, but now I’m 
getting a little used to it.” 

“ At any rate, you’re in a good place now. I’ve often 
thought it must seem to you almost like your convent.” 

Leonora coloured faintly ; he had thought about her some- 
times then! 

“ The Warrens are a good sort,” he said after a pause, if 
you don’t mind being dull; some girls would think they 
couldn’t stand the rectory a week.” 

“ Oh, it’s gay enough ; I’m very happy,” she returned. 

Sarah’s witty and sharp and she gives a spice to everything 
she talks about, even to guild meetings and sewing-schools. 
And Mrs. Warren is so perfect — she brings a feeling of peace 
into the room, don’t you know, every time she comes into it.” 

“ And how about the Heverend Edward ? Do you like him 
as much — as — as the Heverend Davidge ? ” 

“ It’s hard to make a comparison,” said Leonora with a 
little laugh. They are so very different, aren’t they ? ” 

She gave a stealthy glance at her companion, who was 
sitting on the grass half-turned from her — how broad his 
shoulders were, how handsome he was, how good his profile 
was, and his eyelashes were so long, she saw them distinctly 
now for the first time. His eyes she had scarcely ever got a 
good look into; only just once when he was talking to some 
one else — to Sarah, she thought — ^who stood just by her, and 
the sun shone full into them for an instant. They seemed to 
her a sort of deep amber colour, shot with red, that changed 
and changed like a kaleidoscope. Oh, no ! not a kaleidoscope 
— that was glassy, and they were deep and gleaming. But 
there were those two colours in them, and they seemed to 
change while he spoke. They were curious eyes, she thought. 
She wondered whether she should ever get a good look into 
them again; perhaps not, ever. She liked the colour of his 
skin, too : so clear, so clean ; and his hair — she wondered if 
he had ever noticed that it wasn’t unlike the colour of hers : 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


153 


brown with a sort of yellow in it, only darker, the brown 
and the yellow both. 

While she was making this hurried scrutiny, which made 
her heart beat fast — it was so much the most audacious thing 
she had ever done in her life — she had noticed a sort of con- 
traction of his forehead. He had taken off his hat, and it 
lay beside him on the grass. She had a very good point of 
view; she could see whether what she said pleased him or 
not. He would not be likely to turn around and look up at 
her and catch her stealthily watching him. He was shy, in 
a way ; shy like a big, strong man — men like him can be shy, 
and it only makes you like them more. She felt quite 
guilty to be watching the effect of what she said upon him. 
But guilt has its charms, hasn’t it? — particularly when you 
first begin. He was listening keenly for what she said in 
answer to his question about the two clergymen. He evi- 
dently didn’t mean to repeat his question, or to press her for 
an answer. So she must go on. 

You see, they are so very different,” she said tentatively. 

Edward is — well, Edward is above criticism. He is just 
the clergyman, he is just — I don’t know how to say it — he’s 
just — a man of God. And Mr. Davidge — Mr. Davidge isn’t 
that at all, I should think. He is ” — and she gave a little 
laugh — “he’s quite human, I should say; quite unusually 
human ! ” 

Paul’s forehead contracted more as she said this. “ And 
I suppose you like him better for being that ? ” he said drily. 

“ Oh, no ! ” she said, “ I don’t like him as well as a clergy- 
man for being that. But as a companion, as a person to talk 
to — I — I — think he’s more amusing than Edward — don’t 
you ? ” 

“ I’ve never noticed his being particularly amusing,” Paul 
answered almost curtly. “But I suppose men and women 
aren’t generally amused by the same things.” 

“Why shouldn’t they be?” she asked. “Wit is wit, and 
good-nature is good-nature all the world over, isn’t it? And 
Mr. Davidge talks well — don’t you think he does ? And I’m 
sure he is good-humoured and genial and manly and all that.” 

She felt very daring and very wicked; she saw Paul’s 


154 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


anger was rising, and she sweetly hoped she should find a way 
to make it rise still higher. It began to dawn upon her that 
he was a little jealous. Jealousy is such an ignoble passion — 
a great broad-shouldered handsome man like Paul ought not 
to be jealous of anybody. He ought to know he needn’t be 
afraid of all the Davidges in the world. But since he was 
afraid she found it in her heart to long to make him just a 
little more afraid. She remembered that he had not seemed 
gratified when Davidge monopolised the place beside the 
hammock during luncheon and made her talk to him to the 
exclusion of everybody else. 

I don’t see why Mr. Davidge made himself a clergyman,” 
she said with a furtive glance at Paul’s profile. “Wouldn’t 
you have thought he’d have chosen something — something — 
well — something that would have given him a better sort of 
time ? ” 

“ I can’t say I’ve ever thought what kind of a time he’d 
be likely to want to have,” said Paul laconically, straighten- 
ing himself up a little. 

“ Oh, no,” returned Leonora ; “ naturally you wouldn’t 
think about it as much as — as — much as I would, for in- 
stance. Men have so many things to think of — games 
and business and clubs and all that, and politics — oh, 
politics! I’m so ashamed I don’t know anything about 
politics.” 

And so on. She had planted a seed, and she was wise 
enough not to be anxious about it; it would be sure to 
grow up very fast if she let it alone, and so she talked about 
other things, and almost — but not quite — got the plait out 
of his forehead, and the next half-hour passed happily 
enough. At the end of that time she began to wonder if he 
had forgotten — if she hadn’t been mistaken — if it would not 
be well to pique him a little more. A little — ^just a little ! It 
is hard to have to say it of her, but she found a subtle pleas- 
ure in inflicting pain upon a fellow-being, and a fellow-being 
in whom she took a decidedly strong interest. She had so 
few faults — really, scarcely more than one, and that one was 
so slight it seemed more a foible than a fault. Pretty 
young creature ! it came so naturally to her to be admired. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


155 


to be approved — what could be more innocent ? In fact, all 
these twelve years at the convent she had walked in an atmos- 
phere of approbation. Her quick intelligence and fine health 
made study a mere pastime to her; she outstripped her com- 
rades without effort. Her happy temper made her beloved, 
her beauty put her on a pedestal. Eeally reserved, she had 
an air of charming candour which was quite an involuntary 
deception. She was truthful even in her thoughts ; she would 
have found it difficult to plan a real deception, much more 
so to carry it out. But to be approved was so pleasant, so 
natural, so just as it ought, to be! The superior at the con- 
vent, who had watched over her from childhood and who 
loved her as a daughter, saw the rock ahead and dreaded it. 
It was a rock, though, that was not down on all the charts; 
it was one difficult to designate. To try to point it out might 
be to fire a train of vanity; to tell her not to strive to do 
her best because it might lead her to inordinate self-satisfac- 
tion would be distinctly wrong and tend to extinguish all 
honorable ambition. It is evil to desire admiration; it is 
desirable to be worthy of approbation. 

Ho amount of thinking it over brought the superior to 
feel that she should be justified in speaking to her about it. 
It was just one of those things that must be left to the dis- 
cipline of life and to the providence of God; at the same 
time a good deal of praying for her was in order. It was 
probable that none of these had lacked. Pretty stiff discipline 
had accompanied her intercourse with her father from the 
Gare St. Lazare to the hour she had said good-bye to him 
before coming to the Warrens. Excess of approbation she 
had not seemed to suffer from on the Touraine, nor again at 
Meadowburn. It would soon be seen whether under the 
smooth waters ” she had reached lay hidden the rock which 
the superior had always dreaded. 

“ I do wonder if we ought not to go back to the others,” 
she said as there was a little pause in the conversation. She 
was leaning against the tree behind her, which, covered with 
moss, made a good background for her well-shaped head with 
its abundant yellowish-brown hair. Her hat lay on her lap, 
and she was idly pulling out the ribbons on it. “It’s so 


156 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


much pleasanter here, but I don’t want Sarah to give us a 
scolding.” 

Paul took out his watch. “We needn’t go for half an 
hour yet,” he returned. “Some one said half-past five, but 
if we start at six we shall be at home long before the rest of 
them.” 

“ Mrs. Warren wouldn’t start without me,” said Leonora 
a little uneasily. “ I don’t want to give them any trouble.” 

“ Then,” answered Paul, “ we’ll go back in fifteen min- 
utes. That will give us more time than we need.” 

“ If you’re sure,” she said doubtfully. 

“ I’m perfectly certain,” and he put his watch in his 
pocket. “ I’d like to take you back by the Tranford turn- 
pike; it’s a mile or so longer, but it’s worth it. The road’s 
like a billiard-table, and we can go at a good pace. And 
crossing the bridge is one of the prettiest bits in the neigh- 
bourhood.” 

They talked a few minutes longer. Leonora was revolving 
something in her mind, something seditious; she seemed 
perhaps a trifle absent in manner. All at once there came 
a sort of Indian war-whoop, and looking down the grassy 
road they saw between the trees Davidge, and Amy with him. 
He was just putting his hands to his mouth to utter another 
yell when Leonora caught sight of him and, leaning for- 
ward, waved her handkerchief. 

“ Spare us that ! ” she cried ; but it was too late and she 
covered her ears. 

Paul got up. He looked annoyed, and stooping down 
picked up his hat, which lay on the grass. 

“ I should think they’d have to put a new roof on that 
howling man’s church every three months,” he said, “ if 
that’s any sample of his voice.” 

When the two came up to them Paul walked over toward 
Amy and began to talk rather awkwardly to her, while 
Davidge threw himself down full length on the grass at 
Leonora’s side, where Paul had been sitting, but much nearer 
to her. His elbow pinned the bottom of her light dress to 
the ground, Paul noticed with a kindling eye. He turned 
his back on them and walked over with Amy to the edge of 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


157 


the cliff, where for some ten minutes they looked at the view 
across the valley and talked platitudes. Finally they turned, 
and came back to where the others were. 

“ It’s twenty past five,” said Paul. It will take us ten 
minutes to get to the carriages.” 

Leonora, who was laughing at something Davidge was 
telling her, looked up and said, Yes, yes, we’ll come,” but 
Davidge did not look up at all, and kept on with his ani- 
mated recital, whatever it was, not taking his eyes off her 
face. 

Paul turned sharply and walked away with Amy, who 
called out they ought to come, when, looking back a few 
minutes later, she saw they had not moved. 

“ It’s too bad, isn’t it ? ” she said again and again, glanc- 
ing back over her shoulder. “ They haven’t moved, and 
everybody will have to wait. It’s very selfish of them ! ” 

But Paul never turned his head, not even when they 
left the grassy road and struck into a path across the fields. 

Suppose they should lose the way ! ” she speculated. 

It wouldn’t be easy to do that here,” he said. The 
way is as plain as possible.” 

“ But when people get interested in talking, sometimes 
they turn into a wrong path, don’t they? And they did 
seem very much engrossed in talking. Oh, it will be such a 
nuisance to have to wait for them ! And for a clergyman to 
be inconsiderate is most disedifying.” 

All these sentences were interjected separately, with turn- 
ings of her pretty head to look back for them, and stumblings 
of her pretty feet on account of doing so. Paul had to catch 
her once or twice, for it was a last year’s rough-ploughed field 
recently overgrown with grass. At last they got to the pine- 
grove, where deep discontent was brewing. The various vehi- 
cles were all ready for the start, but the intended occupants 
were standing about waiting rather impatiently. 

“ Where’s Leonora ? ” called out Sarah as Paul and Amy 
came up. 

“ Oh, we told them to hurry, and they paid no attention,” 
cried Amy. “ And they know exactly what time it is, for 
Mr. Fairfax told them. They haven’t that excuse.” 

11 


158 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


How inconsiderate ! ” murmured Angelica. 

“ I can’t understand it ! ” cried Sarah, running toward the 
opening of the grove that gave into the field, and calling at 
the top of her voice. 

That won’t do any good, Sarah,” said her brother. 

You can’t make them hear. I’ll go back for them, and 
they will have to come in the wagonette. The others had 
better drive on.” 

Edward turned toward the woods and Sarah turned to- 
ward the group. 

“ I suppose that’s all we can do,” she said, biting her lips. 
“ How shall we arrange things ? Let me see : Leonora told 
me she wasn’t going to drive back with Mr. Fairfax; so, 
Amy, you’d better go with him, and your — your governess — 
I always forget her name ” — indicating with a quick gesture 
the duenna, who was brushing fiies off one of Brewster’s old 
brutes with a twig, and murmuring compassion in his ear — 
“ she will have to get up behind, for only four can go in the 
wagonette. Mother will have to go in that, Mr. Benthorp; 
it will be too cool for her after sunset in the runabout. And 
I’ll go with you if you wiU let me, and somebody — Edward or 
somebody — on the other seat; your man, you know, is going 
in the stage with the servants.” 

“ What a good general you are ! ” exclaimed Mr. Ben- 
thorp. 

“ And I think, if you don’t mind,” she said, nodding her 
appreciation of the compliment, “ we’d do well to get off at 
once, for it’s a long drive. Mr. Fairfax, are you ready? for 
you’d better go first, as the road’s a little narrow in one 
place and you’d want to pass us. Amy, have you wraps 
enough ? ” 

Oh, plenty ! cried Amy, climbing up to the high seat 
of Paul’s trap. 

The duenna had to be recalled from her compassionate 
iHe-d-tHe with Brewster’s old nag and wrapped up and in- 
stalled behind, and then Paul touched the horses with the 
whip and they started off with distinction. 

All the time these arrangements had been under discus- 
sion Paul had not once glanced toward the group of spec- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


159 


tators, but had busied himself with looking over the harness 
and giving an order or so to the man who held the horses’ 
heads. 

Sarah watched them out into the road and then turned 
back, saying to herself : “ Kather rough on Paul. Leonora’ll 
find herself mistaken if she thinks he’ll forget that in a 
hurry ! ” 

She got her mother installed in the wagonette and indi- 
cated to Angelica where was her place, and started off the 
servants in the stage, which lumbered down the road with a 
deliberation that boded ill for the rectory supper. 

“ They won’t get home till nine o’clock at that pace,” 
Sarah moaned ; “ and not a thing to eat till they do ! But 
no matter ! ” 

Finally Edward and the misdoers were seen hurrying 
across the ploughed field. Sarah called to them to make 
haste. Davidge seemed to be in high spirits and Edward 
was looking amused. Leonora grew a little anxious when 
she saw the position of affairs. 

I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said, going 
to Mrs. Warren. 

“ There’s no reason to be sorry for anything,” she re- 
turned, patting the hand that Leonora had laid on the door 
of the wagonette. 

“Let me get in beside you,” Leonora said, rather hur- 
riedly. She got in and Angelica Perkins followed her. 
Edward and Mr. Benthorp were walking toward the runabout 
and looking back for Sarah, who was standing by the wag- 
onette giving the coachman some directions. Davidge had 
put his foot on the step of the wagonette when Leonora said, 
leaning forward : “ Oh, there’s a place for you in the run- 
about; Edward’s to come in here.” 

“ Well,” said Davidge confidently, not moving, “ there’s a 
place for me, too, isn’t there ? I came in the wagonette and 
I want to go back in it.” 

“ Only four can be comfortable in it,” said Leonora. 
“ Sarah has arranged that way. Edward comes in here, and 
you and Sarah go in the runabout with Mr. Benthorp. 

“ Why, Warren’s going with Mr. Benthorp ; he’s walking 


160 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


over to the runabout with him now, don’t you see ? ” ex- 
claimed Davidge, still with his foot on the step and a hand 
on each side of the door. Leonora leaned out of the win- 
dow and gave Sarah, who had just left the coachman, an 
agonised gesture. Unfortunately Davidge saw the gesture 
and looked angry as he let go his hold on the door and 
stepped back. 

“ Why, yes ! ” cried Sarah, taking in the situation ; 
“ you’re to go in the runabout. Edward’s got it wrong, as 
usual. Edward! Edward! You belong here. Mr. Davidge 
goes in the runabout with Mr. Benthorp.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Edward good-humouredly, “ you told me I 
was to go in the runabout ; but no matter ! ” and he made 
his way over to the wagonette, while Davidge, with less 
good-humour, made his to the runabout. Sarah ran over to 
it, too, pulling on her jacket as she ran. 

“ Let them go first,” she said to Mr. Benthorp as he got 
in on the seat beside her; while Davidge sullenly took the 
place behind, and the wagonette moved off at a sign from her 
and the runabout slowly followed. 

Leonora was a little frightened at what she had done. It 
must be said it was a shock to her to find Paul Fairfax 
had driven off so promptly with Amy. She did not 
know exactly how it had come about. She certainly had been 
very audacious. How he had seemed to hate Davidge before, 
and what must his feeling toward him be now, after this 
slight had been put upon him ! She thought about the Tran- 
ford turnpike and the bridge that he was going to show her. 
She wondered if he would show them to Amy; she didn’t 
believe he would; she should hate him if he did; Tranford 
turnpike and the bridge belonged to her. Ah, dear ! She was 
afraid she had done a foolish thing — she would give anything 
if she hadn’t done it ; but it was such a temptation to see the 
storm come up on his face; at the sight of Davidge those 
amber-coloured eyes with the red flakes in them had gleamed 
lightning. But when she had seen Edward waving to them 
and had had that hurried walk back, she had felt quite sub- 
dued, and had meant to eat humble pie and drive back with 
him. And lo! he had gone! She knew she deserved it, and 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


161 


she felt rather proud of him for having gone, but it was hard 
all the same. And Davidge! how she detested him. When 
she saw him put his foot on the step of the wagonette 
she had said to herself, That I can’t endure! She had 
made an enemy of him, too, of course, for she was sure 
he had seen her signal to Sarah. But she didn’t care 
two straws for his enmity. Paul’s — ah! that was another 
matter. 

“ How silent thee is, Leonora,” said Mrs. Warren, who, 
as they rolled comfortably along, felt the pleasant drowsiness 
of well-earned repose stealing over her. 

Oh, I — I — don’t feel silent,” she stammered. I’m only 
a little tired ; this is just the corner to rest,” she added, sink- 
ing back in one. 

' It was too crowded coming,” said Angelica with a 
frown, still smarting from the recollection of the morning’s 
drive. 

I don’t know what they were thinking of to put six in 
here for such a long drive,” said Leonora. And the ser- 
vants are so much happier going in the stage together. I 
wonder nobody thought of it.” 

“ Mr. Davidge was really out of temper just now,” re- 
turned Angelica. “ Such an exhibition of sulks for a man 
of thirty, if not more ! ” 

“ Is he ? ” said Leonora. “ I should give him less than 
that. Don’t you think he’s clever ? ” 

“ Cela depend,^’ murmured Angelica. At a golf match, 
no doubt, or polo even, though I’ve never seen him play. But 
for a priest ” 

“ Oh, of course, I’d never thought of him like that,” said 
Leonora. 

“ I don’t blame you,” returned Angelica stiffly. “ But, 
you see, we have to think of him that way because — because 
we have to see him at the altar. Though, indeed,” she cor- 
rected herself quickly, don’t see him in that way ever 
now. I am in his parish, but I never enter the church door 
— never! ” 

“ Oh ! ” said Leonora, startled ; “ that’s very unhappy. I 
don’t see how you stand it, not ever going to church.” 


162 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“ I couldn’t stand never going to church,” said Angelica 
with dignity. I go to St. Andrews.” 

“ Oh, yes ! I remember I saw you from the rectory piazza 
last Sunday as you came out.” 

“ It is a long drive,” said Angelica, “ but I don’t mind, 
except in bad weather. Anything is better than giving up 
principles.” 

Leono’ra glanced at Edward, who had an expression of 
discomfort on his face that had not been there when they 
started, and Mrs. Warren looked a trifle pained. The humour- 
lacking Angelica was an enfant terrible; she was pleased at 
the prospect that opened of drawing the rector into an argu- 
ment; what could be better than making him show his hand 
and declare his sympathy with what she condemned in Mr. 
Davidge? Nobody knew what Edward Warren believed (she 
called him Edward Warren when she thought or talked about 
his churchmanship). He was here to patch up the differences 
in the parish, and he was non-committal; and in Angelica’s 
eyes to be non-committal was to be in committal of a sin — 
in matters ecclesiastical, that is. His sermons that people 
talked so much about were absolutely colourless, she declared 
— absolutely colourless. Who could tell what he was: high, 
low, or broad? In her heart she believed he was broad and 
secretly in sympathy with Mr. Davidge and his knicker- 
bockers. And yet some strait-laced Presbyterians who had 
come to Comberford for the summer had been so taken with 
his preaching as to follow him closely and not omit a chance 
of hearing him. And all the people in trouble were crazy 
about him and found him so sympathetic that it looked evan- 
gelical. But some of the men who had had doubts and 
fallen off during Father Burton’s rectorship, when they had 
heard strong dogma preached, had been coming back again, 
and declared themselves edified by what they heard. All 
this was contradictory. High, low, broad, she longed to 
make a foray in the theological field, but she had not the 
courage to do it. She might never have the chance to do it 
again. But if the truth must be told, she was afraid of 
^‘Edward Warren ” even on a picnic. And to bring up seri- 
ous questions at the end of a long and fatiguing day, with 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


163 


the jolting of the wheels over the steep road, and with 
everybody looking sleepy — perhaps it was not just the thing; 
perhaps she’d better not speak. 

A half-hour passed and she was getting sleepy herself 
and tired of thinking over these great questions, when bump ! 
and they came to a standstill — the wagonette, not the ques- 
tions, that is. 

The runabout, which had been behind them, just then had 
taken upon itself to pass them. Mr. Benthorp, wdio thought 
there would be no impropriety in passing his own horses and 
putting his own coachman out of temper, suddenly called 
out as much, and went by them. There was just the very 
slightest grazing of the wheels and the smallest kind of a 
mishap to some part of the harness. Everybody made an 
outcry and everybody tumbled out, and there was talk enough 
to drown out for the time, at least, the heat of all theologi- 
cal fires. Edward held the horses’ heads while the coachman, 
with the help of Davidge, went to the repairing of the 
microscopic strap. Davidge took little notice of the occu- 
pants of either carriage; he was evidently very angry, and 
Leonora felt a little sense of elation that soothed her com- 
punction. Sarah was getting out a shawl for her mother, 
as there was just the suspicion of a chill creeping into the 
air, when Davidge came back to help her get up to her 
place beside Mr. Benthorp. 

Edward called out, as they drove off, to spare the next 
farm-wagon they should pass and to be circumspect about 
Paul if they should overtake him, and Mr. Benthorp and 
Sarah sent back some' caustic replies; but Davidge, besides 
lifting his hat, gave no sign, and they were soon out of 
earshot. 

Davidge is glum,” said Edward as he came back to get 
in the carriage, after they drove on. 

‘‘ Isn’t he ! ” said Leonora rather faintly. “ Something 
seems to have upset him.” 

“Well, I’m glad he didn’t upset us,” exclaimed Mrs. 
Warren, now thoroughly over her sleepiness. She was timid 
about horses, and without being silly could talk of little 
else as they drove on. 


164 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


They had to go slowly down the mountain. There had 
been a lovely sunset, of which they had had several glimpses ; 
but now they were going down a steep place, through a thick 
wood, and it seemed longer after sunset than it really was. 
Mrs. Warren pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders 
and praised Sarah’s thoughtfulness in getting it out for her. 
There was suddenly a rattle of stones from a little path 
before them that led down into the road. 

“What’s that?” said Mrs. Warren, startled. 

“ Look ! ” whispered Leonora, “ it’s a man ! ” 

And as she spoke a man carrying a heavy walking-stick 
came into the road a short distance ahead of them. It was 
too dim to distinguish him even so near. The rattle of the 
stones and the sudden apparition startled the horses, and 
Mrs. Warren gave a little gasp. Edward cautioned the coach- 
man to keep them steady, which was not necessary, and reas- 
sured his mother, which was. Leonora, quite pale, was lean- 
ing out to see what was coming, as was Edward. 

“ Why, it is F ather McMillan ! ” they exclaimed in a 
breath. 

“ Oh, that’s too absurd ; I was really frightened,” mur- 
mured Leonora, drawing back, while Edward leaned forward, 
looking out. The walker stepped aside to let them pass, for 
the road was very rough and narrow, 

“We took you for a highwayman. Father McMillan!” 
said Edward, lifting his hat as they passed him, 

“Well, I’m naturally not the kind of man you’d like to 
meet on a dark road, leastways my stick isn’t,” he said with 
a hearty kind of laugh, leaning forward on it as they passed. 

“Father than meet either of you again, I think we’ll 
insist on your getting in and letting us drive you home,” 
said Edward. 

“ Oh, no, no, thank you ! It’s only a matter of three or 
four miles more.” 

But Michael, the coachman, drew up at the words, and 
Edward stepped out and urged the priest to get in. 

“ It will crowd you,” he said, not exactly hesitating, for he 
never did hesitate, but meaning to give them a chance to 
escape if they did not want him. He certainly was glad of 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


165 


the lift, for it was Saturday night, and there were more con- 
fessions than his assistant could take care of comfortably — 
but he scarcely knew the Protestant minister, and it was 
awkward with a lot of strange people in the carriage. All 
the same, remembering the confessions and the inevitable 
Saturday night’s work awaiting him, he hoped they would 
urge him further, which they did, and he got in. \^en h& 
was presented to them all he said, looking at Leonora : 

“ I think I’ve seen this young lady before, haven’t I ? ” 

“ Yes, Father McMillan,” she answered; “ only yesterday.” 

“ Ah, yCs, I remember. And Thursday afternoon.” 

“ Yes, the day before yesterday,” she returned. I’m 
very sorry I can’t go every day to Mass, but it’s so far.” 

“ You’re in the village? ” he asked. 

“ I’m stopping at the rectory,” she answered. 

“ Ah ! ” he said, turning his keen eyes toward her. 

Angelica was interested. She had always longed to meet 
Father McMillan, of whom she had heard many and conflict- 
ing stories ; but he was so out of her social beat that it had 
seemed probable her desire would never be gratified. Now, 
here he was ! caged and cooped up in the same carriage with 
her for an hour at least. Yes, it was interesting ; it made up 
for the many privations of the picnic. Who could say what 
she might not learn of Catholic uses and abuses? She al- 
ready made a note of one thing: Leonora had been for 
three weeks constantly at the church, had been to confession 
three times certainly, and the priest did not even know her 
name, did not even know where she was living. How differ- 
ent from the methods of the Keverend Burton! And she 
knew that Mr. Davidge’s predecessor had made it a practice 
to lie in wait at the church door to greet strangers on their 
way out and to “ make them welcome.” While she was wan- 
dering away in this speculation she heard Father McMillan 
say, in reply to Mrs. Warren’s question about his familiar- 
ity with the road: 

Oh, I know it very well. I often have occasion to pass 
this way. It’s an abominable road. The town ought to give 
it a going-over once in five years at least, and I’m quite 
certain it hasn’t been touched for twice that time. I should 


166 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


think somebody would move in the matter, for there’s a nice 
trout-stream over in the valley beyond, and a straggling little 
hamlet that’s sure to grow if it gets a chance.” 

“ I’ve never heard of the trout-stream,” said Edward ; 
“ but I know the hamlet.” 

Angelica was seized with a desire to enter into the con- 
versation, so she said very daintily and dimplingly: 

“ I hope you have had good luck to-day. Father HcMil- 
lan? One of my friends last week sent me some fine fish 
from there.” 

“No,” said the priest with a short laugh. “I’ve other 
fish to fry in midsummer. Sometimes, for a few days when 
the season opens, I go over; but not now. I have to let my 
assistants off for their two weeks, one after the other, and 
trouting isn’t in order for us who are left.” 

“Do you know anything of a family named Donegan?” 
asked Edward. 

“ Yes,” returned the priest, giving him a quick look. 
“Yes; it was that took me over the mountain. Tim’s 
dead, you know — he died a couple of hours ago.” 

“ Indeed ! ” exclaimed Edward. “ Why, he was well last 
week. He came to me, I think it was on Friday, for some 
help.” 

“ Exactly. Well, he sent to me for the other kind of help 
this morning. He wasn’t ill twelve hours, poor wretch! 
They’re a miserable lot; they’re Catholics, but they haven’t 
practised their religion for years. They bring me an occa- 
sional baby to baptise when their conscience pricks a little, 
but that’s all the use they have for me. I’ve threatened 
latterly not to do it, for there’s no more chance of its being 
brought up a Catholic than if it were born a Mormon; 
but I weakened this morning when there was one in 
question. I think they had been saving it up for you,” he 
said with a sort of laugh, “ but the mother cried, and I 
gave in.” 

“ I’m glad you did,” said Edward. “ I’ve said all I 
could, but they are a wretched set. They seem to feel each 
child has a money value in the matter of baptism. I have 
not been sure that every poor little creature has not been 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 167 

baptised by every other minister in town before it got 
to me.” 

“ It’s quite possible,” he returned, leaning forward on his 
stick and knitting his brows. “ It’s quite possible.” 

If it were a case of keeping marauders out of our or- 
chards,” said Edward, “ we’d find ways to do it, I think. 
Why can’t we combine to protect ourselves ? ” 

Angelica was breathless with interest. 

“ In the matter of material aid we certainly can,” re- 
turned the priest. “ But Fm afraid we’ll have to wait for 
the millennium before we return to each other the spiritual 
apples that we feel belong to us.” 

Well, you’re welcome to all the Donegans I shake down,” 
said Edward, with a smile. 

Angelica felt this was very fiippant. How differently the 
late rector would have treated the subject! And how abso- 
lutely incomprehensible was Edward Warren’s implied class- 
ing of himself with “ every other minister in town ! ” Surely 
— surely — if she only dared to speak! But she didn’t, and 
she sat and watched the newcomer while he explained to Mrs. 
Warren, who had inquired, that the Donegans would always 
have all the help they needed in their own parish, and that 
the injudicious almsgiving outside it was only an encourage- 
ment to mendicancy. 

The light had become dim, but as they drove out of 
the forest the sky was still bright enough to show Father 
McMillan’s face as he sat still leaning forward on his stick. 
He was a short, rather thick-set man; he had an energetic 
tread, a good-natured laugh, and a certain genial quality in 
his voice that made him generally trusted and liked when he 
was not using it in opposition to his neighbour’s views. His 
face was decidedly pleasing: a broad forehead and a firm 
mouth; dark-blue eyes with brown lashes and heavy brows; 
short-cropped brown hair, and the clear, healthy skin so gen- 
eral among the Irish priesthood in America. He was prob- 
ably about forty-five years old, and had been in charge of 
the Catholic church in Comberford for eight years or over. 
A large church had been built since he came, and though 
there were not more than six people of even moderate wealth 


168 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


in the parish, the church was paid for, and the collections 
every Sunday would have made the Protestant ministers’ 
mouths water if they could have counted them over. For 
the growth of the town and the one or two large factories in 
its neighbourhood had brought in a combined Irish and 
Canadian population which was inevitably Catholic. It was 
a well-ordered parish; no grass grew under the feet of Father 
McMillan, and the bishop of the diocese knew no better place 
to send his young priests to get acclimatised to work and 
the demands of the clerical calling. Even though it was 
under their very noses, the Protestant congregations of Com- 
berford knew no more about his church than if it had been 
located on the summit of a mountain in the Holy Land. A 
few advanced Hitualists like Angelica had once or twice, 
perhaps, gone in for a few moments, with guilty thrills of 
curiosity to see what it was like, and had come out again 
with disillusion written on their faces, their taste outraged 
by paper flowers and discordant colourings, and their whole 
souls in a glow of satisfaction to find that Home was no 
temptation to them. For the rest, people drove past it and 
walked past it, and it became like a feature of the landscape 
upon which they did not speculate. The priests were familiar 
figures to them, and after the first shock of disaffection at 
the sight of a new one, they were of as little interest as the 
church was. The local papers recorded the works, little or 
great, of the other parishes ; sermons were reported, and inci- 
dents of supposed moment enlarged upon if they related even 
remotely to them; but no hint of the existence of a Catho- 
lic church ever appeared in their columns — not even in the 
advertisements. In the early days, when the little mission 
had but a clapboarded shanty of a building, the politicians 
had interviewed the old priest, who shook his head and ac- 
knowledged, perhaps reluctantly, that it wasn’t “ for the likes 
of him ” to mix himself up in politics. 

We can think our thoughts,” he said,^“ and we can poll 
our votes, but we’re ordered not to bring the business inside 
church doors, and we’d be bounced if we ever tried it on.” 

“ But outside of ’em,” murmured the tempters softly. 

“Ho; nor outside of ’em,” returned the old priest. “ The 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


169 


order’s gone out, and we know what we’ve got to do, and 
there’s the end of it.” 

And it had to be the end of it. The other parishes suf- 
fered more or less disintegration from the pronounced 
convictions of' their various incumbents, but the muzzled 
minions of Rome kept peace within their borders, and Mike 
and Tim voted one way and Jean Baptiste and Gustavus 
Adolphus voted another, and there was no harm done to any- 
body. In a past generation, when the Catholic Church in 
America was but a missionary body, a rougher, less educated 
class of men went out to carry its teachings to the mountain 
passes and the wayside villages. Row that it boasts the best- 
equipped theological seminary in the New World — the ad- 
vantages of which it often supplements with two or three 
years’ travel and study in the Old World — a young man of 
good parts must be perverse indeed if he fails to be advanced 
intellectually by the first and to take on a polish and derive 
a spiritual stimulant from the second. 

When Father McMillan’s young assistants chafed under 
the feeling that they were utterly ignored in the place 
where they were doing good work, he made a horizontal 
gesture with his hand — a gesture that was habitual with 
him. 

All in good time,” he would say ; “ all in good time.” 

“ Rot in our time,” they would mutter, unappeased. 

“ You shouldn’t ask anything better than to make good 
soil for the future. A man’s a fool if he expects anything 
better than that for himself; he’ll come to grief every time 
if he is not willing to be burned to ignominious and unheard- 
of ashes in his youth, if ashes is what the Church happens to 
need for a fertiliser.” 

When at last Michael stopped before the priest’s house, 
and he got out and bade them good-night and made his 
thanks for their kindness and they drove on, there was a 
silence. Edward seemed lost in reverie; Mrs. Warren looked 
less placid than was her wont ; Leonora was saying to herself, 
“ They must surely like him — ^who could help it ? ” 

Angelica was the first to break the silence. “What a 
pity,” she said thoughtfully, “ what a pity about his accent ! ” 


170 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Perhaps he thinks it’s a pity about ours,” said Edward. 
“ I rather like his.” 

Angelica shrugged her shoulders and grew chill in man- 
ner. “ Well,” she returned after a pause, if you don’t mind 
his accent I’m sure you don’t like his flippant way of speak- 
ing of — rof serious things.” 

“ I didn’t notice,” said Edward. I didn’t know we talked 
of serious things.” 

“ Oh, if you don’t call dying a serious thing — just fresh 
from a death-bed to say — to say ” 

“ If you mean,” said Edward, “ that he didn’t read a hom- 
ily over poor Tim Donegan to us — a party of strangers and 
not of his own faith either — I can’t say I think it wanting 
in good taste.” 

“ Catholic priests,” said Leonora with a vibration of 
anger in her voice, “ don’t pull a long face and preach all the 
time. I can promise you he’ll say a good many prayers be- 
fore he goes to sleep to-night for Tim Donegan’s soul. And 
he’s spent the best part of a long day to try to help him and 
his family. I should say that was as practical Christianity as 
dropping his voice and talking platitudes about the shortness 
and uncertainty of human life to a carriage-load of people 
who know as much about it as he does.” 

“ Oh, I beg your pardon ! ” said Angelica, quite shocked at 
what she afterward described as Leonora’s inexplicable burst 
of temper. ‘‘ It never occurred to me — I was very careless. 
I’m sure I never thought how it would strike you — ^you will 
forgive me my stupid, stupid blunder ” 

“ Oh, there’s nothing to forgive,” said Leonora, stooping 
down to button the lower button of her ulster. “ It is cold, 
isn’t it? If it had not been for Sarah’s insisting on our 
bringing wraps we might have perished coming back ! ” 

When they left Angelica at her pretty cottage, where the 
lights were twinkling through the trees, she interlarded her 
thanks for a delightful day with another layer of apologies 
for her most unintended error. 

I hate a fool ! ” said Leonora, as Edward pulled shut 
the carriage-door and they drove on. 

And there are so many of them ! ” he said with a groan. 


CHAPTER V 


I T was some weeks later. The harvest moon lay broad 
and white across the floor of the rectory “ spare room,” 
from which Leonora’s coming had ousted the all-too- 
frequent clerical guests and mendicant missionaries. 

“You mean they must take a back seat?” Sarah had 
asked when Leonora’s coming was first talked of. It must 
be said she had not been entirely with her mother in the 
matter of Leonora’s coming. How did they know what she 
was really like? For a visit, yes; but for the whole sum- 
mer — who knew how she might “pan out”? To turn away 
the missionaries, and even to make the bishop take a back 
seat for this foreigner, this heretic — was it right? was it 
strictly loyal? But Mrs. Warren had argued that the back 
seat was nearly as good as the front seat on the second 
floor of the rectory. How Sarah had forgotten that she had 
ever had such scruples. She adored Leonora, and nothing 
was too good for her. 

At the moment that the moonlight was illuminating the 
front room, the inferior spare room was occupied by a mis- 
sionary from Arizona, or rather by his valises; in person 
he was downstairs in the library boring Edward to let him 
preach at the eleven o’clock service on Sunday, begging for 
his mission. Edward, however, reasonably felt that a parish 
has some spiritual rights. His had already listened to two 
begging sermons that month, and he had no intention of 
yielding to Arizona; but the siege was going on still, Sarah 
had ascertained, listening over the stairs. She was in her 
wrapper, and she tapped at Leonora’s door and came in to 
have her evening talk before they went to bed. Leonora 
was already on the bed and the lamp was out, but the moon- 

171 


172 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


light was in, and such a glory of it. Sarah sat down on the 
side of the bed, putting one foot on the chair beside it ; she 
was braiding her hair, which was long and dark. 

If Edward gives in ! ” she speculated. 

Oh, he won’t ! ” said Leonora. “ At ten o’clock, when 
we came up, I saw it in his eye.” 

But now it’s eleven, and the man’s at it yet. He won’t 
give up. He knows Edward can’t snub him in his own 
house. If he should — the thing’s impossible — but if — any- 
way — he should get leave to preach. I’ll do something to 
break it up. I promise you I will ! ” 

“ What could you do, dites done ? ” 

“Do? Oh, wait! There are ways. Maybe I’d set him 
on to Mr. Davidge. He’s in such a state of mind he’d be 
willing to let Beelzebub have the pulpit, if he thought he 
could get out of it himself.” 

“ It’s horrid to say that,” said Leonora gravely. 

“ It’s very well for you to put on such an air, my dear. 
You know that the man’s mad about you, and that he’s 
lost teetotally the little Christianity that he ever had. He’s 
a fine muscular fellow, honest as the day, but he ought 
never to have studied for the ministry; it’s a disgrace to 
the Church that he ever was ordained. Well, the old bishop 
can’t live for ever. That’s my only comfort. How he ever 
could ordain a man like Davidge! How could Davidge 
have got over his ^ swears ’ ? It’s all a mystery to me. But 
what isn’t a mystery to me is that he’s so gone on you.” 
And she dropped the unfinished braid, and leaning forward 
kissed Leonora’s hands which lay near her, lightly clasped, 
upon the coverlid. 

Sarah was the one girl in a thousand who didn’t want 
to get married. She had her own scheme of life; she had 
an enthusiasm for her brother, she loved her home, she was 
enamoured of her usefulness; she was not averse to her 
importance in the parish. Her nearest approach to love’s 
young dream had been the aspiration one day to marry a 
foreign missionary, who should be a widower, who must 
have many children, and who must go to the farthest mis- 
sion station down on the map. According as her ardour 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


173 


rose or fell, she pictured him more or less ill, she increased 
or curtailed the number of his children. This stayed by her 
till sixteen. Then it was replaced by the deaconess idea. 
This had finally given way to her present ambition which 
seemed destined to be the permanent one. Leonora’s coming 
had supplied the element of romance that human nature 
craves at twenty. That the lovers were not hers did not 
matter a bit, in fact she would have had no use for them 
herself. They would only have called up angry blushes 
and grotesque embarrassments. Her mother, who saw most 
things, saw . this, and quoted to herself, with a sigh and a 
smile, the saying of her Quaker grandmother : “ It isn’t the 
money and it isn’t the good looks, but it’s the ^ Come hither ’ 
in the eye that does it.” There was no “ Come hither ” in 
Sarah’s eye, alas! But there certainly must have been in 
Leonora’s. 

As they talked, the moonlight crept across the floor 
nearer and nearer, and then stole upon the bed and fell on 
one of the slender hands that Sarah had kissed, and glit- 
tered upon the facets of its diamonds. There was a scent 
of roses from the vines on the trellis outside the window, 
and of mignonette from the borders below. The air was 
warm from a warm day, growing slowly cool from the heavy 
dew of a night in late summer. 

“ I don’t understand you, you know,” said Sarah. 

“ What should we have to talk about if you did under- 
stand me,” said Leonora, and if I understood you, au 
fond% We’d be what Mr. Davidge calls back numbers, and 
we wouldn’t interest each other any more.” 

That’s nonsense 1 ” exclaimed Sarah ; “ you can’t get me 

away from what I asked you before, and that was ” 

Oh, no matter what it was I ” murmured Leonora, 
twisting the diamonds round her finger and watching ab- 
sently the glitter that they made in the moonlight. “No 
matter what it was.” 

“ Yes, it does matter,” cried Sarah. “ I asked you, and 
you’ve got to answer me; what right has a woman to make 
a man unhappy, and why shouldn’t it make her unhappy 
to know she’s made him so? If you’d spoiled a batch of 
12 


174 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


tlie cook’s bread, by opening the window on it and chilling 
it so it wouldn’t rise, you’d be really miserable — now, 
wouldn’t you? Or if you’d knocked down a child when you 
were riding on your bicycle, you’d be perfectly cut up about 
it if you’d hurt him even a little bit.” 

“I suppose sentimental sufferings are not the same as 
real ones. There, now, we won’t talk about it any more.” 

I should think that was the answer of a cold-blooded 
woman of the world, and not of a young girl who pretends 
to be pious. Do you mean that Mr. Davidge ” 

“ Oh, give Mr. Davidge a rest ! I don’t want to hear 
any more about him.” 

“ But you shall hear more about him ! ” cried Sarah, 
catching Leonora’s hands and drawing them away from her 
ears, which she was stopping. “ You shall hear about him, 
and you shall hear that I think you are behaving very badly 
toward him, and that you aren’t any too well-principled 
about some other people.” 

What other people ? ” asked Leonora. “ Sarah, you 
really are objectionable ! It is time for you to go to bed.” 

“ I’m not going, if it is. Leonora, tell me the truth. 
Don’t you know that Mr. Davidge’s infatuation for you is 
the talk of his parish? Don’t you know he’ll have to resign 
if he marries you ” 

Marries me ! ” cried Leonora with infinite scorn, start- 
ing up. 

“ Well, it’s the logical, not to say legitimate, end of 
being in love with you, I suppose.” 

^‘Indeed it is not; I am ashamed you dare say such a 
thing to me.” 

“ Now, listen to reason, Leonora. You have no right to 
be so angry with me. Here is a man who has been devoted 
to you since he saw you first six weeks ago. He’s imprudent 
and quick-tempered, and about everything that a clergyman 
ought not to be in that line. Being the central figure in 
that broad church parish, he comes in for a lot of criticism; 
broad church people have no reverence for the office, and 
don’t spare the persons of their ministers. Now the idea 
that he has passed over all the young girls and all the 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


175 


■widows in his own congregation, and has gone crazy about 
a Roman Catholic, naturally does not endear him to them, 
don’t you see?” 

“ I won’t interfere with their aspirations,” said Leonora 
haughtily. He hasn’t asked me to — marry — him ” (she 
uttered the words as if they were the vehicle of too ignoble 
an idea to be spoken). If ever he should, the matter will 
be settled once and for all.” 

“ Now, don’t be angry, Leonora,” said Sarah, gratified 
to see that she could produce so much effect. “ Everybody 
knows you haven’t encouraged him, and maybe he doesn’t 
even realise himself how deeply his feelings are involved.” 

“ Nor how deeply your imagination is involved,” mut- 
tered Leonora, sinking back on her pillow. “ I don’t see 
how you can think such things, Sarah, and how you can 
dare to say them to me.” 

Sarah made a moue and spoke in a lighter tone. “ Don’t 
let’s get dramatic,” she said. “ But it goes to my head to 
have such romances unfolding before my eyes.” 

Leonora suffered herself to be kissed, and again recom- 
mended Sarah to go to bed, to which Sarah consented, not 
in the least meaning to go. 

“ Arizona’s coming upstairs,” she said, listening. “ And 
by the noise he makes shutting his door I conclude Edward 
has stood firm. It must be said he generally does stand 
firm, though he’s very mild-mannered, the dear. But I 
think the bishop and the standing committee will find 
they’ve caught a Tartar, some of these days. Heigho!” 
and she sighed a little. 

“What is the standing committee, and what is a Tar- 
tar?” asked Leonora, yawning and pushing the pillow up 
under her head. She was glad to get off the subject of Mr. 
Davidge, which troubled her a little, though she did not 
know exactly why it should. Sarah explained what the 
standing committee of a diocese was, and what a Tartar 
was. She made it all very clear, and she made Leonora 
laugh a little, which she thought was a good sign. Then 
she said good-night and turned away, but it was only a feint. 

“ By-the-bye,” she exclaimed, “ I’d quite forgotten to tell 


176 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


you. Mother says the old Fairfax ladies were here this 
afternoon. They say Paul’s coming back on Saturday.” 

“Why, he’s only just gone away, hasn’t he?” said Leo- 
nora with another yawn, pulling the blanket up a little 
round her shoulders, for it was getting cooler. Sarah went 
to close the window partly. 

“ That’s better, isn’t it ? ” she said. “ Why, no, he’s been 
gone a whole fortnight. He went to Newport, they said. I 
wonder if he liked it ? ” 

“ Probably, if he stayed a fortnight. Sarah, if you don’t 
mind, will you pull down the shade a little? There, that’s 
right. Are you going now? Well, good-night.” 

Sarah had not been going, but there seemed nothing for 
her but to go. At any rate she had planted a seed; she 
would wait until to-morrow to see whether it had germi- 
nated. Interesting as the Davidge incident was, she won- 
dered if the real romance was not going to centre round 
Paul Fairfax. Certainly Paul was a stern philosopher, and 
if he felt any interest in Leonora he concealed it pretty 
well. The only clew to his feelings seemed to be that his old 
aunts were keenly interested in all that concerned the occu- 
pant of the front spare room at the rectory. They asked 
few questions, questions were underbred, but there was a 
keen attentive look in their eyes when there was any men- 
tion made of Leonora, and they seemed to listen breathlessly 
when anything was said of her movements, characteristics, 
antecedents. She and Leonora and Edward had been invited 
by them to high tea to meet Amy and Mr. Davidge, but that 
had been when Paul was away, just after the picnic. It 
had been a very successful little festivity, as far as the en- 
joyment of the guests went, but how far the hostesses were 
compensated by a deeper understanding of their guests could 
only be matter of conjecture. Amy and Leonora had both 
looked their prettiest. Edward had been very agreeable, for 
him, and Mr. Davidge had been in high spirits. Sarah 
felt no harm had been done, as Leonora had not openly 
committed herself to the encouragement of Davidge; but, 
sad to relate, Paul came up soon after from Friday to 
Monday, and did not come to the rectory. Then he went 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


177 


away to Newport, the place that Leonora abhorred, and had 
stopped two weeks. And now he was coming back. Sarah 
felt in her heart that she should hate him if he did not 
come to the rectory this time. That he had never made a 
call on them since he was invited to the picnic would make 
it a positive rudeness if he did not come. What had dis- 
affected him? Could it be he resented it that Leonora had 
not driven home with him? Had he asked her, or had he 
put her aside for Amy? She dared not ask Leonora. It 
was all very well to be frank and insistent to the point of 
impertinence about Davidge. That was patent to all Com- 
berford. But Paul Fairfax — c’etait une autre paire de 
manches. One could not affirm that at this moment he re- 
called other than vaguely Leonora’s existence. One might 
almost say that it would be more complimentary if he did 
not recall it, and that it would be more hopeful ; it is always 
more difficult to revive a burned-out fire than to kindle a 
fresh one. 

Sarah had set her heart upon Leonora’s making this con- 
quest. She thought of Leonora as beyond all comparison 
the most beautiful girl she had ever seen. She looked at 
her tall, slender figure, her graceful outline, the pale brown 
and bright gold of her hair, the faint rose of her skin, and 
she felt it in her to refute, as she would have refuted an 
attack upon some article of her religion, a suggestion that 
there was physically any fault in her. Sarah was always 
positive, and never more positive than about this. And as 
her world was rather a narrow one, it happened that Paul 
Fairfax was decidedly the most prominent young male it 
contained. (That, of course, was excepting Edward; the 
Edwards of her scheme did not marry.) Paul was of the 
world, rich, desired, important. What a caprice of fate, if 
these two beings, standing alone on the pinnacle of her 
approbation, should each perversely turn away from the 
other and go down and seek a mate from out the inferior 
crowd below! Sarah was not one patiently to bear such a 
contradiction. Speak she must and should some day soon, 
if destiny did not mend its manners. She thought this as 
she passed Arizona’s door on her way to her own room. 


178 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


When Leonora heard her door shut she got up and fas- 
tened her own, and went to the window and stood for a long 
while looking out into the moonlight. At last she turned 
away and pulled the curtain on the scene. “ I’m not going 
to be bullied into thinking I’ve done something very wrong 
when I haven’t,” she said to herself. “ Z/n peu vaniteuse^ 
c’est tout. I won’t be that any more, if I can help it; but 
neither will I feel it on my conscience that the man’s un- 
happy. He’ll soon get over it. I suppose men always act 
that way. It’s their place to be in love with us ! The fitness 
of things — ^what do you call it? It hasn’t hurt him. It’s 
only added to his experience. But I won’t do it again.” 
And she went to sleep. 


CHAPTER VI 


S ATURDAY came, and Sunday. Sarah knew Paul was 
in the place, somebody had spoken of seeing* him. 
But he was not at church with his aunts. It must 
be said that he never was with them there, but he probably 
would have come this time if he had had any feeling about 
Leonora, Sarah thought with some chagrin. For Leonora 
came home always from Mass long before ‘‘ church was 
out ” at St. Andrew’s, and she had a habit of sitting on the 
veranda and watching the people disperse. And the people 
had a habit of looking out of the tail of their eyes at her 
as she came down the steps to meet the rector’s mother, and 
to take her books and her parasol and carry them up and 
pull a chair forward for her to sit in, and put a footstool 
under her feet. It must be said there were those in the 
congregation to whom it was not agreeable to feel that a 
Roman Catholic was sheltered by the rectory roof, and that 
the rector’s mother should cordially accept these little atten- 
tions from one so alien in faith and practice. The more 
educated were above these littlenesses, of course, but it 
takes all sorts to make a world, they say, and it takes a 
good many sorts to make a congregation. The inferior sort 
were rather disaffected, but the rector’s force of character, 
and the involuntary respect it commanded, kept the dis- 
affection smothered and silenced all but the most confiden- 
tial criticism. 

That Sunday morning — the Sunday morning that Paul, 
being in Comberford, did not come to church — Leonora was 
sitting on the veranda with Mrs. Warren, whom she had 
established in a big chair, and who looked pale and tired 
and as if she were glad to rest. She generally had that 

179 


180 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


look when she came in from church at this hour on Sunday 
morning, and Leonora covertly wondered whether it were 
because she had been out also at the early service, and were 
physically really tired. But she habitually got up long be- 
fore her family and daily went to the early celebration, and 
she had not that look on weekdays. Was it the sermon? 
There must always be a certain agitation, she reasoned, in 
hearing one so near to you preach; there is a vague thrill, 
possibly a disquiet, in listening to words spoken aloud be- 
fore a multitude, which have not been spoken to you as 
you — words to which, in a way, you do not have any more 
right than the multitude. Leonora could understand that 
a young selfish wife might feel that way, but not a woman 
like Mrs. Warren. She would be happy in her son’s suc- 
cess as a preacher. She would ask nothing better than that 
he should be appreciated. Sarah felt so, and it could not 
be denied Sarah had possibilities in the line of selfishness. 
But Sarah came home every Sunday with a colour in her 
cheeks and with her eyes quite shining. And at the early 
dinner she always talked about the sermon as if she had 
not lost a syllable and as if she had spent her time in 
calculating the effect of each on the different members of 
the congregation. One could see she was proud of every 
word, too, and was flattered by being in a position to dare 
to criticise. And while her colour deepened and Edward 
parried her thrusts, half laughing, but with his always 
anxious look, the mother would grow pale and silent, and 
sometimes would even go away before the meal was finished. 

“ Sunday seems to tire mother,” Sarah had said once 
when Mrs. Warren had left the table. “ She didn’t use to 
be so worn out after two services. I don’t like to think she’s 
growing old.” 

And Edward had not answered, but his face had clouded, 
and there was an end of discussing the sermon. 

Leonora, after that, said to herself : “ It must be some- 
thing in the sermons — something that his mother feels and 
that nobody else does. She knows him through and through. 
^ The first slight swerving of the heart ’ — what is it that 
she feels? What is it that troubles her? Why did she say. 



THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


181 


that first morning after I came ^ Thee needn’t hope to get 
out of the reach of tempests. Smooth waters don’t lie be- 
tween this and heaven ’ ? What was she thinking about, and 
why is she afraid ? ” 

That Sunday morning — the Sunday morning that Paul 
did not come — Leonora sat by her on the veranda after 
church. The people who drove were slowly sauntering out 
to their carriages with those who were walking; groups 
stood in the churchyard and on the church steps. It was 
the usual “ after-service ” reunion of a country parish. 

Presently the latch of the little gate between the church- 
yard and the rectory dropped, and Amy, with Sarah, came 
across the grass to the veranda. At the same moment the 
gate on the street was opened, and Angelica Perkins came 
up the path. She had not felt quite intimate enough to 
come in at the side gate. When these two comparative 
strangers had appeared from opposite directions, Mrs. War- 
ren had made a hurried motion to get up and go away, but 
had sunk back in her chair again without speaking. 

What does the angelical lady want ? ” murmured Leo- 
nora under her breath. 

Mrs. Warren shook her head with a faint smile. “We 
shall see,” she said. “ One can never foresee in her case.” 

Amy looked a little sulky, Angelica a little excited, as 
they met. Angelica had come to say something, it was easy 
to divine. Sarah was annoyed, it was evident. But every- 
body was civil. 

They came up the steps and sat down. Ten minutes 
were passed in platitudes. Presently a faint, almost im- 
perceptible pause occurred, which Angelica broke by saying : 

“ I wonder if I could see Mr. W arren for a moment ? ” 

But her usual ill-luck pursued her. At that instant the 
side-gate latch fell, and Edward and Mr. Benthorp, in earn- 
est conversation, entered the rectory inclosure, and passing 
across the lawn without looking toward the veranda, entered 
Edward’s study by its outer door. Angelica flushed and 
Amy looked a thunder-cloud. They both, however, saw fit 
to stay and kill the time till the study should disgorge its 
contents. They said sharp things about the dispersing con- 


182 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


gregation, the last of whom were the two Fairfax ladies, 
who had stayed behind in the vain hope of being unobserved 
while they went to lay a few flowers on an old grave in the 
churchyard. It was the anniversary of a long-past day of 
death, a day no one living recalled except themselves. Soon, 
they knew, there would be no one to remember it, and they 
held each other’s hands as they stumbled through the long 
grass and furtively laid the flowers upon the mound. 

Those sentimental old things ! ” said Amy flippantly. 

“I wonder,” said Angelica sententiously, ^‘what virtue 
they think there is in laying flowers upon a grave ? If they 
would only say some prayers, or ask to have a celebration 
offered, there would be some sense in it, but of course they 
wouldn’t dream of doing that ! ” 

Sarah was biting her lips. She had a prejudice against 
being rude in her own house. Leonora looked uncomfort- 
able and Mrs. Warren felt unhappy, while the two defenders 
of the faith continued their criticisms as they waited in 
vain for the study-door to open. 

“ Well,” said Amy at last in a tart little voice, getting 
up and adjusting her veil, “ I am going. Tell papa I’ll send 
the carriage back for him. I know,” she added with a bit- 
terness that seemed unnatural in one so young, “ that he’s 
talking me over with the rector, and I am not going to 
wait any longer. Shall I take you home ? ” 

Angelica thanked her, and said with fimmess that she 
would wait to see the rector. 

“ If it’s something that I can tell him from you,” said 

Sarah ; “ he’s apt to be so rushed on Sundays ” 

But Angelica elected to remain. It was nothing that 
any one could tell him from her; she must see him in pri- 
vate for a moment. One felt that whole tomes of dogma 
were implied in the protestation against any intermediary. 

The carriage waiting for Amy stood directly before the 
church gate, that of the ladies Fairfax was a little behind 
it. While the group were standing idly on the steps of 
the veranda, saying very unnecessary last words, Leonora 
had been furtively watching the two old sisters struggling 
through the long grass of the cemetery. The heat of the 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


183 


noon sun, the agitation of the visit to the grave, the haste 
to get away before they were observed, made the elder one 
unsteady or unwary. Her foot caught in a briar that was 
concealed by the grass. Leonora saw her fall against a 
grave-stone and heard a sharp little cry of pain. She did 
not wait for the frightened shriek of the sister, but calling 
to Sarah to come, sprang down the steps and across the 
lawn. It was but a moment before they were standing, 
panting, beside the poor little lady lying on the grass, white 
and limp. 

“ I am telling her to try to get up, and let me help her 
to the carriage,” cried her terrified companion, bending over 
her; “it’s only a step — Try — try ” 

But the other said, in a faint voice: “ You know I would 
if I could — but I can’t — I can’t — ^move — the least bit.” 

“ But try — but try,” moaned the distracted sister ; “ no 
matter if it hurts you — we will be home in a moment, and 
then you’ll be all right; oh, try ” 

Leonora was kneeling beside her and supporting her head. 
Sarah pushed the sister aside and knelt down in the grass. 
She had experience and intelligence, and she knew in a 
minute what had happened. She stood up, and, with her 
arms akimbo and her brows knit, thought out what had 
best be done. The agonised look in the old eyes fastened 
on her face made her all the more sharp and prompt. 

“We must get a couple of men,” she said, “ to lift you 
into the carriage.” 

“ Oh, not strange men, not strange men ! Oh, if I could 
only have Paul ! ” murmured the poor sufferer. 

“ Is Paul at home ? ” Sarah asked sharply of the sister. 

“Yes, yes; he will be waiting luncheon for us.” 

“ Leonora, jump into the carriage and go for him — 
quick ! ” And she almost pushed her toward the gate. 

“ Her hip is broken,” she said as they ran along, “ and 
the sooner she is got home the better. There isn’t a moment 
to be lost.” * 

“Will she get over it? ” asked Leonora, as Sarah hurried 
her into the carriage and gave the dazed old coachman the 
order. 


184 the tents of wickedness 

No,” said Sarah briefly, she’ll never walk again, and 
she knows it, too. I can see it in her eyes.” She slammed 
the carriage-door, and called out to Amy, who, with Mrs. 
Warren, had just arrived on the scene: Get in your car- 
riage, and go for the doctor, quick ! If Emerson isn’t home, 
go for Clark. But, of course, if Emerson’s in the neigh- 
bourhood, get him, wherever he is, and bring him straight 
away.” 

Amy was not used to being ordered about in this way, 
and she drew back a little. Certainly I’m willing to go, 
if there is any necessity for being in such a hurry; pray 
explain to me why a servant can’t be sent.” 

Sarah set her lips together tight for an instant, and 
then said : There is necessity for being in such a hurry, 
because Miss Fairfax is in great pain, and the longer the 
broken hip is left, the less chance there is for it to knit 
and the greater her suffering will be.” 

“ Oh,” said Amy, moving toward the carriage, “ you 
want the doctor to come at once, then.” 

At once ! ” snapped Sarah, turning her back and hurry- 
ing to the group around the white-faced little lady lying 
on the grass. 

Meanwhile the old coachman was urging the old horses 
to unusual speed, though Leonora thought she could have 
made the distance on foot in less time. At last they were 
at the gate, and she sprang out and ran down the path. 
There was a broad piazza and there were many flowering 
vines, which made it cool and pretty. The door was open, 
and she looked about in vain for a bell or a knocker, and 
with an exclamation of annoyance stepped inside, but started 
back with one of embarrassment when she caught sight of 
Paul Fairfax lying on his back on a wide settee, with his 
hands behind his head. 

“I beg your pardon,” he said, starting up as he saw 
Leonora standing in the doorway. He was going to ask 
her to come in, but her face showed it was no question of 
a visit. 

Is anything the matter ? ” he said. 

“ Yes — ^that is — Miss Fairfax has had an — an — accident 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


185 


— has fallen down, you see. They think she’s hurt herself 
and she will have to be lifted — and — she wants you — she 
doesn’t w^ant anybody else to touch her — and I came for 
you — and if you don’t mind, I think we’d better go im- 
mediately, for it will make her nervous waiting.” 

Paul had snatched his hat as they passed the hall-table, 
and they walked quickly toward the gate. 

How did it happen ? Where is she ? ” he asked, as he 
pulled open the gate. 

“ In the' churchyard. She caught her foot in a briar in 
some long grass on one of the graves in the corner.” 

He followed her into the carriage, telling the man to 
make haste, as he shut the door sharply. “ I suppose you 
don’t know if any bone is broken ? ” he said, as he looked 
away out of the carriage-window. 

“ Sarah says she has broken her hip.” He smothered a 
low exclamation. 

But maybe Sarah doesn’t know,” faltered Leonora, 
frightened at the effect of her words; he had been so cool, 
she had not supposed he would mind so much. “ And the 
doctor hasn’t seen her. It mayn’t be that — Please don’t 
worry; as likely as not it isn’t that ” 

Ho, possibly not,” he answered in a restrained voice. 
“ But any accident at her age is serious.” 

Then there was a pause, which gave Leonora an oppor- 
tunity to wish Sarah had not sent her to fetch him. She 
had not before thought of anything but getting some solace 
for poor suffering Miss Fairfax, the sight of whose face had 
filled her with a sort of agony. When the recollection of it 
came back to her mind, after a moment given to personal 
pique, it quite obliterated the pique. 

^‘It seems so hard,” she said aloud after a moment. 

Just when she needs — everything. It can’t be any too 
easy to be old when things go right, but when there’s pain 
and helplessness — and — and all the rest of it ” 

“That’s what they call a decree of Providence, I sup- 
pose,” he said between his teeth, and he didn’t wait for any 
response, but leaned forward and hurled an admonition to 
the man to whip up his horses and make better time. After 


186 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


that he didn’t speak again, nor take his hand off the door 
nor his eyes off the horses, which were manifestly doing 
their best, as was evidenced by their breaking every few 
steps into a wabbling canter, shortlived, but frequently 
renewed. 

Neither Leonora nor Paul spoke. Paul had always loved 
this one of his aunts more than anybody else in the world. 
She had seemed to him from a boy better than any one else, 
and wiser, too, according to his judgment. She understood 
him and his reserves, at any rate, and there was deep sym- 
pathy between them, and the thought of her present suffer- 
ing and future helplessness from this cursed and unnecessary 
accident cut him to the heart. Wliy was she, of all women, 
to be treated so by the God to whom she had been so faith- 
ful? Why, at the end of such a blameless life, should she 
be tortured as we wouldn’t torture a dumb beast who had 
done us service? 

At last the church was in sight. Paul didn’t wait for 
the old horses to reach it, but sprang out while they were 
doing their feeble best, slamming the carriage-door after 
him without speaking, vaulting over a low wall, and mak- 
ing toward the churchyard corner where the group were 
standing. 

The carriage-door did not shut, but swung back and hit 
against the wheel. Leonora humbly waited for its rebound, 
pulled it and fastened it, then leaned back with a sigh of 
relief. At least she had done what she could to bring com- 
fort to poor Miss Fairfax; she knew what it was this mo- 
ment to her to hear Paul’s voice and feel his strong arms 
round her. Healthy young Leonora, with no discipline to 
speak of in her short past, had yet that something in her 
make-up — imagination, or whatever it is — that rendered her 
capable of understanding conditions which were far removed 
from her own experience. “ The tragedy of it, the tragedy 
of it ! ” she kept saying to herself. 

At eighty years old to be laid on one’s bed, to be shut 
up within four walls, to be denied doing the little useful- 
nesses, the little graciousnesses that had been her pleasure 
all her good life! To be giving trouble instead of giving 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


187 


help, to be a gloom instead of shedding a glow. To have 
pains and aches, and dreads and panics, and to know there 
wasn’t any cure for them but dying. To lie there and think 
and think and think. Never to see the garden again, never 
to see the pretty rooms that she had spent her whole life in. 
Never to be able to do the least thing for herself. Never 
to be able to hope that she ever could. Nor that her body 
could ever do anything but deteriorate in this unnatural 
inaction, grow weaker, grow more exacting, clog her soul 
more, hinder it; damage her mind, which the course of 
nature alone would have been enfeebling. Air, light, the 
sights and smells of spring, the clear autumn sunshine in 
the woods through which she had loved to drive. A sick- 
room, its inevitable odours, its gradually increasing close- 
ness as chilliness was bred by the slowly failing circulation. 
And the years that might go on before it ended. Eighty, 
ninety — she might be that before she died. 

The carriage stopped near the church gate; Leonora got 
out quickly, for Paul was coming through the little crowd 
of people, holding his aunt in his arms as if she were a 
feather’s weight. She saw the relaxed look on the suffering 
face, and she saw that Paul was saying something to her, 
very low, as he made his way cautiously toward the carriage. 
Mrs. Warren was holding the carriage-door open; Sarah was 
giving quick directions to Edward, who was hurrying off 
with a telegraph-blank in his hand; Angelica was fussing 
over the younger Miss Fairfax, who was shaking with agita- 
tion and scarcely knew what she did. Amy looked helpless 
and distressed; her father was holding the horses’ heads 
and giving some orders to the old Fairfax coachman, who 
had quite lost his. A maid was running from the rectory 
with an armful of pillows. Leonora stood in the back- 
ground, saying prayers probably, for she didn’t know any- 
thing else to do. 

They were getting the poor sufferer into the carriage; 
she made a moan of pain, and Leonora hid her eyes and 
turned away — she could not bear the sound. 

Leonora ! ’’ called Sarah sharply, “ come here and shake 
those pillows out. Mr. Fairfax, see, I will get in and hold 


188 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


her — so! There, dear Miss Fairfax — now just one minute. 
Leonora, do have some sense! — pull my dress smooth — the 
pillow here. Another one there. Get in, Mr. Fairfax, quick 
— tell them to go on — there ! ” 

And the carriage rolled slowly away, with Mr. Benthorp 
on the box beside the coachman, who was of little use. The 
younger Fairfax lady was put into the Benthorp carriage, 
Angelica and her bottle of salts accompanying her. Amy 
followed, and Leonora was left alone with Mrs. Warren 
and a few straggling starers, who presently dispersed. 

That day the early Sunday dinner at the rectory was not 
eaten till two hours after its scheduled time. The agitation 
of the accident had even then scarcely died down. Only 
Mrs. Warren and Leonora were at the table; after a little 
Edward came in. 

The telegrams have gone ? ” his mother asked him. 

Yes, I got them off, after a long hunt for the operator, 
who was at his dinner.” 

“ It was too bad thee had to go.” 

^‘No; the walk did me good. The want of exercise is 
the worst feature of my Sunday.” 

“ Mot want of exercise of patience, at any rate,” she 
said. “ People never seem to remember that thee hasn’t 
had a minute’s rest since sunrise. It’s their day of rest, 
not thine. What did Mr. Benthorp have so much to talk to 
thee about ? ” 

“ Amy thought he was talking about her,” said Leonora. 

“ Amy wasn’t far wrong,” he returned with a smile, 
which rather died out as he went on : The contradictions 
of fate! There’s a good father, with but one wish in the 
world, and that is to make his one child happy. And, hang 
it, he can’t make her happy! All his money, all his influ- 
ence, everything that his really great ability has earned 
him, he would use to the last point to gratify her. And she 
refuses to be gratified but in just one way, and that way — 
more’s the pity — ^would break her father’s heart.” 

It’s that sisterhood idea ? ” asked his mother gravely. 

“ Yes, mother, it’s just that.” 

“ Amy’s delicate,” said Mrs. Warren thoughtfully. And 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


189 


she’s too much of a child to know her own mind. I don’t 
wonder her father can’t consent. It’s hard upon him.” 

Yes, it is hard. Such a good man — one in a thousand. 
I respect him thoroughly. He’s wonderfully unselfish about 
it, too. He is really thinking more of her than of himself. 
The last interview we had, I found he had read up all that’s 
been written about Anglican sisterhoods in this country — 
had studied all their rules, and knew the civil law as well as 
the ecclesiastic law about them, and with his clear mind had 
assimilated the whole business. He knows modern religious 
associations by this time as well as he knows stocks. And 
he knows Amy. And he can’t stand tamely by, I suppose, 
and see her committed to what she isn’t fitted for. He has 
absolutely no influence with her, and he can’t bring him- 
self to use his authority, which is all he has, till he’s tried 
everything else. I suppose he was really desperate, when he 
heard accidentally of a very clever and well-bred but pov- 
erty-stricken woman, whom he is planning to install as a 
kind of advice-giver-in-general to Amy.” 

“ To come to live in the house ? ” cried Leonora. 

^‘Yes, in the house.” 

Good heavens ! But what becomes of the duenna ? ” 

Oh, she stays, depressed into a kind of housekeeper, I 
suppose. The occupant of the Chair of Influence which he 
proposes to found won’t have any but immaterial impalpable 
duties ; she must win Amy’s affection, must insinuate ideals, 
insensibly lead and guide her, elevate her standards and 
solidify her mind. Heaven knows what she isn’t to do.” 

“What is he thinking of?” sighed Mrs. Warren. 

“ He isn’t thinking, he’s worrying, which hasn’t any re- 
lation to thinking.” 

“ I shouldn’t blame Amy if she ran away,” said Leonora. 

“ I told Mr. Benthorp, delicately, that I shouldn’t, either,” 
he returned. “We had a long talk. I hope he was dis- 
suaded. He begged me, though, to see the candidate, whom 
he is to telegraph to come out to-morrow; he leaves the 
decision in my hands.” 

“ Girls didn’t use to have such fads in my day,” said his 
mother. 


13 


190 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“No; this is the day of big fortunes and of big prob- 
lems, and a new deal generally. I don’t believe there’s a 
man living who can predict bow the game’s going to turn 
out.” 

“ But poor Amy,” said Leonora, who wasn’t as much 
interested in problems as in persons, “I hope she won’t 
even bear what threatened her. I don’t think she could ever 
respect her father again if she did.” 

“Oh, not so bad as that!” said Edward. “You must 
remember it’s difficult for a man to understand a young 
girl’s whims. I quite believe Amy will outgrow all this and 
settle down into good sense and usefulness before long, if 
her father can be patient and not show so much solicitude.” 

“ But I don’t see how you can find him so clever, and 
all that, if he could even think of such a plan. Why, what 
excuse could he offer for bringing the woman into the 
house ? ” 

Edward shrugged his shoulders. “ Desperate situations 
require desperate remedies. Given the Reverend Burton 
preaching revolt, and Amy only too eagerly listening, there 
is a situation if not desperate, at least deplorable. I don’t 
blame Mr. Benthorp for being anxious, but I’m sorry he lost 
his head enough to fancy that founding a Chair of Influence 
under Amy’s nose was the way out of the difficulty. My hope 
is that the candidate he has heard described as so clever, is 
clever enough to see it’s impractical. I shall do my best 
to-morrow, and you, mother, must do yours, for she’s to 
come in the two o’clock train and go back in the four-twenty, 
and I’ve a committee meeting at three-thirty. So you’ll 
have to give her a cup of tea — ^with or without advice, as 
you see fit.” 

“ Thee can count on me for the tea, but not the advice.” 

Edward’s belated soup was brought in at the moment, 
and as the servant stayed in the room, the matter dropped, 
and the Fairfax trouble took its place. 

“ What does thee think the chances are of getting a 
nurse tp-night ? ” his mother asked of Edward. 

“Rather slim,” he returned. “It’s Sunday, and it’s 
August, and there’s doubt about there being any nurses left 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


191 


in town. Wliat with going olf for a day’s recreation and 
with absence on long cases, the nurses will be pretty well dis- 
persed to-day. But we must hope for the best, and luckily 
Sarah is equal to the occasion.” 

“ Isn’t she ! ” exclaimed Leonora. “ She has a gift. It 
was a revelation to me just to see her settle the cushions in 
the carriage.” 

“ Yes, she’s very apt,” he returned. It’s hard to be- 
lieve she hasn’t ever had any training; but as much as one 
can be said to know about one’s next of kin, I should say it 
was certain that it had all come to her by nature.” 

“How she lifted her! How she turned her over! How 
she found out in a minute that the hip was broken! Oh, I 
felt such a useless dolt ” 

“ That’s just the way it affected me. I was grateful 
when she sent me off about the telegrams.” 

Leonora laughed. It was delightful to hear Edward talk 
in that unconstrained way and to see the relaxed expression 
of his face. It was borne in upon her that he never looked 
that way in Sarah’s presence. Edward, great man that he 
was, on the verge of a bishopric, was never exactly at his ease 
when his young sister with the black eyes was sitting beside 
him at the table or near him in the room. It was one of 
those temperamental discords which you often see in a fam- 
ily, the causes of which are past finding out. You have 
got to take them as you find them and tiy to avert by grace 
what you can never fully eradicate from nature. It was 
not anything to the purpose that Sarah adored her brother, 
and that her brother had a deep affection for her. She was 
absolutely unable to understand why he felt thus and so 
about most matters, and he could only get at her point of 
view by determined application of mind to the many sub- 
jects upon which they differed. 

“ I should think it would be so dreadful for her to have 
to stay there all night, if the nurse doesn’t come,” said 
Leonora. “All so strange and awkward, being in another 
person’s house, and then such a responsibility.” 

“ Yes,” said Edward, “ ordinary mortals would be a little 
staggered by the responsibility, and wouldn’t take kindly 


192 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


either to the loss of a night’s sleep. But you’ll see, Sarah 
will be as fresh as a lark to-morrow morning if she has to 
stay; and in six hours the doctor will be taking orders from 
her, not she from him.” 

“ Oh, thee can laugh, Edward, but thee’s glad enough to 
have her when thee’s got a headache, and when she has to 
look after the parish for thee and do all but preach the ser- 
mons and baptise the babies ! ” 

“Even these things she could do with distinction,” said 
Edward with a half -laugh ; “ don’t imagine I depreciate her 
talents. I only wonder at them. She was bom to rule.” 

“And what was thee bom to do? They seem to think 
in the diocese that that was what thee was born for, too.” 

The laugh died out of Edward’s face. “ Dioceses make 
mistakes,” he said, “as well as mothers,” and he changed 
the subject. 


CHAPTEE VII 


T he next was one of those let-down ” mornings which 
everybody must remember having awakened to. The 
Fairfax trial was a tragedy to the Fairfaxes, and to 
those under the rectory roof it had been a shock, if not a 
tragedy. This latter-day discipline came home to Mrs. War- 
ren looking into her own future. Edward always felt 
human suffering keenly, and suffering falling upon any one 
with whom he was in any sense charged was necessarily 
painful to him. And to Leonora, new to shocks, it had not 
been insignificant. She came downstairs dull and tired, 
and a little ashamed of having had so much feeling about 
what was really no affair of hers. 

“ If I go on like this,” she said to herself as she crossed 
the hall, “exhausting myself with feeling so sorry every 
time anything happens to anybody, I shall be considered a 
fool. Why, all over the world people are breaking their legs 
all the time. It’s ridiculous.” And she turned the handle 
of the door with new-born decision. 

“What a dull day,” said Edward as he placed a chair 
for her and pushed away a lot of letters that he had been 
reading. 

“Yes,” she answered, “and it’s preparing to be worse 
than that.” 

“ What can be worse than dull? ” he asked. “For a day, 
I mean.” 

“ Well, it can be viciously bad and rain a verse, as it is 
going to do in half an hour.” 

“ Oh, not so soon as that! ” exclaimed Mrs. Warren, who 
was just coming in with something in her hand. “For I 
wanted to make thee useful and get thee to take this little 

193 


194 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


package over to the Fairfaxes’ to Sarah. She wrote for two 
or three things last night, but it was too late to send one 
of the women with them, and this morning I find they are 
so busy and so — well, I won’t say sulky, but something so 
near it I don’t want to risk putting anything more upon 
them. And then Peter is ofi at the blacksmith’s with Dolly, 
who has lost a shoe. And Edward’s got somebody coming 
to audit the architect’s accounts with him at nine-thirty. 
So it’s plain, Leonora, there’s nobody but thee to go.” 

Leonora had flushed when Mrs. Warren began. It was 
exactly what she had made up her mind not to do, no mat- 
ter what happened. Sarah was useful, Sarah ought to stay. 
The nurse had not come, and everything was in the clouds 
about her coming. The doctor had said the weights must 
be put on that day, it could not be left any longer. Sarah 
was the only one to help the doctor; Sarah must stay, of 
course. But Sarah’s staying made no necessity for her 
going and adding another to the crowd of useless sympa- 
thisers who would undoubtedly be there. Mo, certainly she 
should not go. Mot that she was not sorry for poor Miss 
Fairfax’s suffering, nor for Miss Alida in her state of ner- 
vous excitement, just as she ought to be sorry for all people 
in trouble. But there was a limit to what one had to offer; 
better save some pity for those who hadn’t enough, and not 
waste it all on those who were bored by their abundance. 
Mo, she had planned her morning; she was going to write 
letters to Paris and try to find out what had happened to 
poor Pepita. All this she had resolved on before she left 
her room, and here was Mrs. Warren, as of set purpose, 
trying to make her do what she hated above all things to do. 
But Mrs. Warren looked pale and worn, though she spoke 
cheerfully. And Edward was evidently distressed that he 
could not take the package himself; he even caught up his 
hat to go out and try to find what was known at the rectory 
as “ a passing boy.” There was nothing for Leonora to do 
but to say she’d go. Only going among such useful people 
seemed to emphasise her uselessness! 

She took the package and went to the Fairfaxes’. And 
her fears were not unfounded. There were a number of 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


195 


people already there. Everybody had heard of the accident 
by this time, and they had begun to come and would be 
coming all day long. And poor Miss Alida Fairfax looked 
as if she should break down if she had to see another face 
or speak another word. And how many more faces would 
she have to see as the day wore on, and how many more 
times would she have to go over the story of the accident! 
Leonora had promised Mrs. Warren to explain something 
to Sarah, so she had to wait, awkwardly and impatiently, 
after sending the maid upstairs with the message. Angelica 
was in the drawing-room with a very long face and a very 
subdued voice; Amy had stopped to inquire on her way 
from taking her father to the train. Mr. Davidge was there, 
very flushed and stiff when he caught sight of Leonora ; and 
his senior warden’s wife and daughter, with much lack of 
intelligence, were talking of the accident and asking mani- 
fold questions of poor Miss Alida, whose head was spinning, 
and who, having told the story so many times already, felt 
it probable she should lose her mind if obliged to tell it 
again. The senior warden’s daughter asked everything, to 
the last detail, and the senior warden’s wife didn’t quite 
catch it all and had to have everything repeated to her. 
Leonora’s quick eyes saw that the pulses of poor little Miss 
Alida’s throat were throbbing, and she saw the shaking of 
her hands and heard her give one or two random answers, 
and at the same time heard another carriage driving up to 
the door. This is barbarous,” she said to herself, “ but it 
isn’t any business of mine.” 

Presently the maid came down; would Miss Hungerford 
please come upstairs to see Miss Sarah for a moment? 

“Mo, I can’t go up; ask Miss Sarah to come to the foot 
of the stairs.” This in a tone of quiet decision. Presently 
the maid came back. Miss Sarah could not come down to 
the parlour; if Miss Hungerford would kindly come to the 
landing-place. Setting her teeth together, Leonora followed 
her up the first half -flight, where she had to wait a minute 
or two for Sarah. 

“ I can’t leave Miss Fairfax for more than five minutes,” 
said Sarah as she appeared ; “ and if once I get down in 


196 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


that roaring flood of fools I shall be submerged. Why 
don’t people know enough to stay away when they can’t do 
any good?” Then, with an eye on the door of the sick- 
room, she gave Leonora all the news of the night; sent 
messages to her mother about the house and counsel to 
Edward about the parish, and interspersed all with lavish 
praise of Paul — ^his devotion to Miss Fairfax, his nice ways 
with his Aunt Alida, his consideration for her, Sarah, and, 
in fact, the overflowing measure of his manly virtues. This 
did not seem to stir any answering chord in her hearer, who 
began to look annoyed, and who presently said it was time 
for her to go away. Sarah said, “ Not yet,” and leaned over 
the balusters and lifted a finger. 

“Hush! I hear Angelica Perkins offering Miss Alida 
to come and stay with her till the nurse arrives. And I 
hear that Bennett woman telling her if there is anything 
her cook can make for Miss Fairfax to be sure and let her 
know. As if anybody ever asked anybody else’s cook to 
make anything for them, and as if any good ever came of 
these supererogatory offers 1 ” 

“ If they’d only go away before the poor thing breaks 
down ! ” 

“ They must be made to,” said Sarah, sitting down on 
the lower step of the landing-place and knitting her brows 
with thought. “ They must be made to.” Sarah looked 
tired, but alert and well. She was in her element. “ If it 
would only rain — rain hard — then nobddy more would come 
after we’d got through with these. They’d send to inquire. 
But it’s clearing,” she went on with a sigh, as a misty bar 
of sunlight fell across the stairs from the window above. 
“I have it!” she exclaimed, brightening. “Now this is 
something you can do. You can’t do much, you know, but 
look pretty and wear fine clothes ! ” And she touched ad- 
miringly the embroidered end of a broad sash Leonora wore. 
w“ First, you can go down into the drawing-room and send 
Miss Alida up to me. Say I need her at once — at once ! ” 
“Very well. I’ll tell her; the sooner the better, I sup- 
pose. Good-bye,” and she stooped to kiss Sarah. 

“ Oh ! ” exclaimed Sarah, refusing the kiss, “ you don’t 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


197 


suppose thaVs all you’ve got to do? Why, a baby could do 
that. No, what I mean is that you must stay on all day 
here, and keep the neighbours at bay and let poor Miss 
Alida go and lie down, for she didn’t sleep an hour all 
night.” 

Leonora gave an indignant start and pulled the end of 
her scarf away as she moved toward the steps that led down 
into the hall. I — to stay — ^here ! I cannot imagine what 
you are thinking of.” 

But Sarah caught the scarf again and pulled her back, 
and then got hold of her arm. “ I’m thinking of your duty,” 
she said, smothering a laugh. 

^‘I’ll take care of my conscience,” she returned with 
heat. ^^Let go my scarf, please. You’ll spoil it.” 

“ I repeat, staying here and saving poor Miss Alida all 
that strain is your duty, and you ought to see it. There’s 
nothing for you to do but stay in the drawing-room and 
tell every one that comes why Miss Alida can’t see them, 
and how Miss Fairfax is, and go over the story of how she 
fell, if they insist upon it, and what the doctor thinks about 
her chances, if it will give them any pleasure, and be 
amiable and nice, and let them go away thinking you are 
delightful and that you are much impressed with their 
neighbourly devotion.” 

think you’re losing your wits, Sarah! Why don’t 
you invoke a servant, I should like to know! I never heard 
the Fairfax house wasJdshort of servants.” 

^ That’s just it. You have gone to the point with your 
usual directness. The Fairfax house is at this moment 
short of servants. The old chambermaid has taken to her 
bed in consequence of the shock, and the middle-aged par- 
lour-maid is doing double duty. The octogenarian cook’s 
all right, but the laundress doesn’t know where anything is, 
and poor Paul has been driving about ever since eight 
o’clock trying to find somebody to come in and fill up 
vacancies.” « 

“ Well, poor Paul will have to drive about a little longer,” 
said Leonora with infinite disdain. You wouldn’t have 
thought an amiable young girl, brought up in a convent. 


198 


• THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


too, could have spoken with such unmasked contempt of 
any fellow-heing. She extricated her scarf from Sarah’s 
fingers with a swift movement and went down the stairs, 
looking back with an upturned, defiant face, to say: ^^I’ll 
send Miss Alida to you, and I’ll say to Miss Angelica Per- 
kins that perhaps she can be of service, if she is at liberty 
to remain here for the day. Good-bye ! ” 

Sarah made a spring to stop her without being seen 
from the drawing-room, but Leonora was too quick for her, 
and, without giving her a chance for a look or a word, dis- 
appeared into the well-peopled room, with a crimson spot 
on each cheek. For in throwing back her head defiantly 
as she freed herself from Sarah, she had caught sight of 
Paul, just above them, coming down the stairs. It was 
impossible for him not to have heard every word she said. 
She walked directly up to Miss Alida, now in the clutches 
of the new guest whose carriage had driven to the door as 
she went up to see Sarah. Everybody stopped to look at 
Leonora, she was really ehlouissante. 

“ Sarah begs me to bring you to her; she is not able to 
leave Miss Fairfax,” she said, rather low. 

Miss Alida clutched her arm. Yes, dear,” she mur- 
mured gratefully, and with not much more than an in- 
audible apology, tottered to the door with her. Exactly on 
the sill of it they met Paul, whose hand his aunt grasped. 

“ Take me upstairs,” she whispered. “ I can’t stand this 
any longer.” 

“ I am sure you ought to lie down, dear Miss Alida,” 
Leonora said, not looking at Paul. Then she turned back 
to the drawing-room; Angelica was standing near the door. 

“ I think it might be a kindness if you could stop to-day 
and relieve Sarah a little,” she said. 

“ Oh, do you ? ” faltered Angelica, rather taken aback at 
having her offer accepted. I didn’t know — I mean I don’t 
think — perhaps — that I am familiar enough in the house to 
— to do — any good — to, be of real service, I mean. Sarah 
knows them so well; Sarah is so at home here.” 

“ Oh, but Sarah can’t do everything ! She has to be with 
Miss Fairfax till they get a nurse, you know. She would. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


199 


I am sure, be grateful for somebody to see the people that 
call, who naturally are anxious to hear more than a servant 
can tell them.” 

I ought to be at the Church Embroidery Society this 
afternoon,” Angelica said, looking at her watch irresolutely. 
She found herself remembering an admonition which the 
late rector had once caused her to write out in Latin for 
her penance.. (He was apt to give penances which were a 
bit original. Hot just such and such a prayer or psalm; 
he wanted “ to make the punishment fit the crime,” as it 
were, and he said a great deal about the perfunctory char- 
acter of the Roman Confessional.”) This maxim she 
could only partially recall, though it had taken her a good 
half-day to write it out. It was something about doing the 
duty that came nearest to hand; it might have been from 
the Fathers, or it might have been from Tacitus, or it 
might even have been a Spanish proverb or a Dutch adage. 
But it seemed to fit the present emergency. Yes, certainly, 
as she was here^ this was nearer to hand than the embroid- 
ery class. And incidentally it might prove interesting, too, 
to see how Paul F airf ax would act at home, and under such 
trying circumstances. It might be her duty. She looked 
at her watch again, and told Leonora she would try and 
arrange to stop. And Leonora said then she had better see 
Sarah and tell her so. 

After that Leonora went out, looking neither to the 
right hand nor the left, and Mr. Davidge went with her. 

“You will let me walk home with you?” he said in a 
smothered sort of voice. For it was not possible to keep 
away from her; and when she looked like that it was not 
possible to be anything but humble. 

She did not know exactly what he was talking about ; it 
was some commonplace, probably, to keep people whom they 
met from seeing what he was feeling; and her answers were 
rather absent-minded ones. She was saying over and over 
to herself: “It is silly to be so annoyed; I am ashamed of 
myself. It is quite beneath me to care what Paul Fairfax 
does or does not do. What difference can it make to me? 
A man whom I may never see again, whom I hope that I 


200 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


may never see again! He has bad manners — he was rude 
to me yesterday, he simply ignored my existence; but why 
should I mind, why should I give him another thought ? ’’ 
And then she tried to attend to what Mr. Davidge was say- 
ing, and again found she wasn’t attending at all, but was 
reiterating to herself that what was perfectly indifferent to 
her ought not to make her angry. Ho, certainly; but noth- 
ing ought to make us angry, for the matter of that. 

Finally Mr. Davidge’s humility began to lift its head. 
Badly as he was in love, he was human, and pretty vehe- 
mently human at that. 

I am afraid I am boring you,” he said, “ for you don’t 
seem to have heard a word that I’ve been saying.” 

Then Leonora was confused, and in her confusion said 
more than she meant to say, or than was quite, quite true. 
If they hadn’t seen Mrs. Warren at that moment looking 
over the rectory gate, it might have been embarrassing. 

^^I just came down to the gate to look for thee,” she 
said, opening it. “ I felt, after I sent thee away, that it 
wasn’t quite the thing to have done. Michael has come 
back from the blacksmith’s, and I was going to send him 
down in the runabout, if I hadn’t seen thee coming. Such 
a hot day as it’s turned out ! ” 

And she stroked Leonora’s hand and looked anxiously 
at her flushed face. The latter was so relieved to see her 
that she kept fast hold of her hand, and got on the inner 
side of the gate and shut it almost before Mr. Davidge 
rendered compte to himself of what was happening. 

Come in, Mr. Davidge; Edward’s in his study,” said 
Mrs. Warren, with her disengaged hand opening the gate 
hospitably and wondering why Leonora had shut it in his 
face. Mr. Davidge was wondering, too, but though he was 
inclined to resent it, he fed his hopes with the old traditions 
of woman’s perversity, and went away after a few civil and 
insipid words. 

“Why didn’t thee let thy broad-minded admirer come 
in?” said Mrs. Warren, drawing Leonora’s hand through 
her arm as they went slowly up the path toward the house. 

“ He makes me tired ! ” exclaimed Leonora, who had im- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


201 


bibed a little slang in these two months. “Don’t mind 
about him, dear Mrs. Warren. Let me tell you all the 
messages from Sarah instead. The last telegram from the 
last nurse is more discouraging than ever,” etc. 

That afternoon, as Leonora was coming down the stair- 
case to go out for a drive, the maid met her to tell her that 
Mrs. Warren had been sent for to Miss Fairfax, who was 
not so well. Mr. Paul Fairfax had come for her himself, 
and she had left a message for Miss Leonora, asking her 
to go to the parlour to give tea to the lady who had arrived 
in the two-forty train to see Mr. Warren. Her pettishness 
of the morning had quite put out of Leonora’s mind the 
conversation of the day before. Hearing that poor Miss 
Fairfax was worse made her feel ashamed of her bad tem- 
per, and she hurried into the parlour, penitently hoping to 
make up for it by being very tolerant of the objectionable 
person whom Mr. Benthorp had sent. She had pictured to 
herself a middle-aged woman, dressed in be-droopy black, 
with a prim, pious be-droopiness of the mouth and a sallow, 
sanctified tone of skin. 

The lady was walking up and down the room restlessly; 
she turned as Leonora entered. She was tall and well-bred- 
looking, with dark melancholy eyes and dark hair. She 
looked a little flushed, in consequence perhaps of her con- 
versation with the strange clergyman to whom she had 
come, but she had much dignity and distinction of manner, 
and she was well though simply dressed. 

“Mrs. Warren has been suddenly called away,” said Leo- 
nora, coming forward; “she left word for me to give you 
a cup of tea. I am sorry I did not know before, that you 
might not have had to wait for it.” 

“This is Miss Warren?” asked the visitor. 

“ Oh, no ! ” said Leonora, feeling for the first time how 
very much she wasn’t Miss Warren. Our dear selves — what 
a shock it always is to feel that any one can, even for a 
moment, think that we are some one else. While she was 
pulling a chair up to the little tea-table for the stranger, 
she explained her presence in the household, and then began 
to' make the tea. 


202 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“ Mrs. Warren will be so sorry that she wasn’t able to 
see you,” she went on. “ But she was sent for suddenly. 
A dear old friend yesterday met with a serious accident; 
here in the churchyard, before our very eyes, she fell and 
broke her hip. Miss Warren has been with her ever since, 
and just now they have sent for Mrs. Warren, and I’m very 
much afraid she’s worse.” 

“She is old?” 

“ Oh, yes ; very much over seventy ! I’m almost afraid 
she’s nearly eighty.” 

“ Oh, that’s serious ! ” 

“You think it is?” asked Leonora anxiously. How 
could she have blamed Paul for not remembering her ex- 
istence on first hearing of the accident, when even a stranger 
was struck with the gravity of the misfortune! 

“Yes, I’m afraid it is. Has she been able to have the 
weights put on yet ? ” 

“No; there has been all manner of trouble about getting 
a nurse, and the doctor is not willing to do anything with- 
out one, for, you know, he hasn’t an assistant. It is so 
different here from a great city.” 

The lady hesitated, and after a moment said ; “ I have 
had training as a nurse; I had charge of the surgical ward 
in a hospital for a year. If in the emergency I could be 
of use ” 

“ Oh,” cried Leonora, “ won’t you let me take you to the 
house? You can see Mrs. Warren; she will know. Wouldn’t 
it be providential ! Please don’t hurry with your tea ; there’s 
plenty of time — or, no, there isn’t; but the trap is at the 
door, and, once in it, we’ll get there in a moment.” 

The visitor did hurry with her tea, though she probably 
had needed it badly. In a minute more they were in the 
carriage on their way to the obnoxious house which Leonora 
had never meant to enter again. She talked eagerly and 
explained graphically, and the stranger, if a person of in- 
telligence and good feeling, could nbt have helped under- 
standing the situation and being interested. When they 
reached the house she sprang from the carriage, saying to 
her companion, as she turned to her: 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


203 


You’d better come directly in, for you can only catch 
your train by hurrying, if the nurse has come; and if she 
hasn’t, and they want you to stay, they will be very glad of 
every minute you can give ” 

Leonora only remembered her feelings of the morning as 
she walked across the piazza to the door where she had left 
Miss Alida and Paul. She felt angry again, but this time 
it was with herself. For human suffering appealed to her, 
and she detested herself for having forgotten, for any pangs 
of wounded pride, the poor sufferer stretched on her life- 
long bed upstairs. But with a fatality, Paul, hurriedly 
crossing the hall from the dining-room to the drawing- 
room, turned at hearing their steps, and they stood face to 
face again. 

I’m sorry to stop you if you’re in a hurry,” she said in 
rather a frightened tone ; but — have you got a nurse yet ? ” 

“No,” he answered gravely; “we’ve been disappointed 
again. I’m going to town myself, at once.” 

“ Oh ! ” cried Leonora with eagerness ; “ perhaps this lady 
can help you, she is a nurse, she can stay till you get one; 
she will tell you all about herself; I brought her to see 
Mrs. Warren.” 

They had both turned toward the stranger, who found 
the situation a little uncomfortable. 

“I came with a letter to Mr. Warren about — something 
— else,” she said. “ But this young lady asked me to come 
here before going to the train, as she understood I had been 
a nurse. I shall be quite willing to stay till a nurse comes ; 
but I should like to see the doctor before we talk any more 
about it.” 

“The doctor is in the dining-room; will you come in 
to see him? ” he said, and civilly led her across the hall. 

When the door had closed behind them both, Leonora 
turned and looked out across the flower-beds, tapping her 
foot and knitting her brow as she stood on the threshold. 
“ It looks uncommonly as if I had been meddling with what 
wasn’t any business of mine,” she said to herself. ^ “ But I 
can’t help it. I’m not going to worry. If it does Miss Fair- 
fax any good, I don’t care what they think about me. And 


204 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


if it doesn’t, I shall have the satisfaction of knowing I tried 
to do her good.” 

In a few moments they all came out of the dining-room, 
the doctor looking almost beaming, and Paul somewhat re- 
lieved, and the newcomer taking off her gloves. 

“You’ve been quite our good angel,” said the doctor, 
shaking hands with Leonora. “ As it happens, I know some- 
thing about Miss Borda’s work, and feel most thankful for 
her help.” 

“ Oh, I’m so glad ! ” said Leonora artlessly. “ I was sure 
you’d like her; from the minute that I saw her, I did.” 

Miss Borda smiled a brief smile; smiles did not stay 
long on her face. 

“ But don’t you want to send a telegram to your friends, 
or something ? ” asked Leonora. “ They will be anxious 
about you, won’t they ? I can drive to the office with it.” 

“ Thank you, but there’s nobody,” she said, “ to be anx- 
ious, except the gruff janitor of a ten-story apartment- 
house.” 

They — that is, the doctor and Paul and the nurse — were 
moving toward the stairs, so there was nothing more for 
Leonora to do, and she said faintly : “ Shall I come back 
for Mrs. Warren in a little while?” But they were all 
intent on their patient, and did not seem to hear her; Paul 
was asking some question of the doctor, and the nurse was 
taking the pins out of her veil and hat as they mounted the 
stairs. They evidently had not thought of her going away, 
or more probably they had not thought of her at all, she 
reflected. She walked about the hall for a while, listening 
to the low voices and hurried steps above. A bell from 
upstairs rang; nobody answered it, and it rang again. She 
hurried down the corridor toward the kitchen and met a 
new maid straightening her apron with one hand and with 
the other pushing into her mouth some cake from her after- 
noon tea. 

“ You ought to hurry,” she said. “ The bell is ringing 
for you.” The maid pinched her lips together and hurried 
a little. Leonora heard a third jangle of the bell and then 
Paul’s step on the stairs and a good sharp admonition to 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


205 


the loiterer as he turned and went back to the sick-room; 
and then she heard a carriage drive to the door. She glanced 
into the drawing-room and saw Angelica fast asleep in an 
easy-chair, with a novel in her lap and her feet on a foot- 
stool. This carriage probably contained the first of the 
afternoon influx of visitors, and Leonora felt she ought to 
warn Angelica, but just as she entered the drawing-room 
she saw, from one of the windows opening on the veranda, 
that it was Edward who had arrived in the carriage. She 
hurried out to meet him. He had driven home after fulfill- 
ing his engagement, and had found that Paul had come for 
his mother, and he had hurried on to see if anything had 
gone wrong in the sick-room. Leonora told him she be- 
lieved Miss Fairfax was worse, and that they had not been 
able to get a nurse. 

“ But oh, Edward, we have found something for your 
candidate to do! Imagine, while I was giving her tea, I 
told her about Miss Fairfax and how they couldn’t get a 
nurse, and she offered, after a minute, to come. I brought 
her here, and the doctor knew at once who she was, and was 
most glad to get her. She is a nurse and had had charge 
of a surgical ward in Bellevue for a year, when her health 
broke down, and I suppose she just had to look for some- 
thing easier to do. I liked her so much, Edward, when I 
first saw her, didn’t you ? ” 

Very much,” he said. “ I am glad of this. It’s a relief 
to me, both for poor Miss Fairfax and for her.” 

“ Did you — did she — I mean, could you make her under- 
stand about Amy ? ” 

Oh, yes ; she is intelligent, she is rightminded. I had 
no difficulty in making her understand. I think it was a 
sort of desperation drove her to think at all of the plan. 
She did not tell me anything of her past life; she seems 
reserved. But I judged her to be unhappy and a bit critical, 
and in some ways rather unfitted to battle with the world. 
Too well-bred to take up with Bohemians, too proud to be 
dependent, too delicate in health to bear the rough life of a 
real worker. One never knows what to do with people like 
that. They worry me more than sinners, and one can do 
14 


206 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


less for them than for the poor, or for the ill or the igno- 
rant.” 

“ Exactly. They seem to you just like yourself gone to 
pieces, and you don’t know how to put them together, any 
more than you’d know how to put yourself together.” 

That’s an accurate definition of it. And sympathy only 
seems an affront. Well, I’m relieved that she’s here. I 
wonder if I’d better go up ? Is there such a thing as a bell 
about the place ? ” 

“ There are bells, but they don’t seem to produce servants 
when you pull them. Wait, I’ll catch this one,” and she 
hurried forward and intercepted the maid coming down the 
stairs. “Mr. Warren wants you to take a message for him 
to Miss Eairfax’s room.” 

“ I can’t,” she said ; “ they want the hottest kind of 
water, and it only runs tepid in the bathroom.” 

Leonora caught the pitcher from her and ran toward 
the kitchen, saying over her shoulder: “Take Mr. Warren’s 
message, and come back for the hot water.” 

The kitchen was almost as full as the drawing-room had 
been in the morning. The old chambermaid had come down, 
with her head bound up in vinegar, and was sitting in a 
comer, bowed with grief, but taking a little nourishment. 
The middle-aged parlour-maid was swallowing gulps of tea 
between her sobs. The laundress was standing in the middle 
of the floor, arms akimbo, telling a dreadful tale of the 
death of an old gentleman she knew, who hadn’t but just 
only slipped on the rug in his own room and struck hisself 
the least mossel on his head, and never knew a happorth 
after, and died insinsible the very night he did it. The 
octogenarian cook, lifting herself for a minute from over 
a kettle of very good-smelling soup on the range, hurled an 
admonition to her to take herself out of the kitchen till 
she’d got on to the difference “ betune ” heads and hips, and 
knew enough to do the little work that the Lord had given 
her sense to do. The coachman, in fatigue dress, was sigh- 
ing over his tea in a comfortable comer, but drinking it all 
the same, and two or three hangers-on of the family who 
had come in to inquire, seated round a table, were shaking 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


207 


their heads g-loomily and eating, with solid though perhaps 
not flippant appetite. Leonora’s entrance struck them all 
of a heap,” and much good cake and jam was dropped on 
the floor or into aprons in the attempt to appear engaged 
only in mourning the calamity that had overtaken their 
benefactress. The cook was the only one who seemed undis- 
turbed and who retained her presence of mind, and to her 
Leonora addressed herself : 

If you have some very hot water, cook, will you fill 
this pitcher and send it up to Miss Fairfax’s room? The 
new maid is coming down at once for it.” 

And with a smile she vanished. In the corridor she met 
the maid and admonished her to make haste. While she 
was waiting, to be sure that she had made haste, a bell rang 
again; this time it was that of the front door. The girl 
ran past her with the hot water, saying, brokenly : 

“ Mrs. Warren wants you to wait for her and take her 
home; she won’t be long.” 

The hot water delivered, she came down, panting, to the 
door and took at least four visitors into the drawing-room, 
and then the hall-bell rang again. 

“ What shall I do ? ” thought Leonora. “ I can’t go into 
the drawing-room — that’s too intolerable; I can’t go into 
the dining-room — that’s too intime; and I can’t sit on the 
piazza, a spectacle for gods and men. Mrs. Warren may be 
an hour, and she mayn’t be five minutes. The back piazza 
will be a refuge.” 

She went softly past the drawing-room door; there was 
an animated jangle of voices, and she heard Angelica say 
something about tea, ringing the bell as she spoke. Feast- 
ing in the kitchen, feasting in the drawing-room, and the 
mistress lying on her Matrazzen-gruft upstairs. What a 
farce is the sympathy of one’s fellows! 

Then she stole softly through unexplored ways which 
she thought would bring her to the back piazza. But the 
old house was rambling; she could not find any door to the 
back piazza. All she did find was Paul’s den, which stood 
open and inviting, with a door giving upon the lawn and a 
tree close up beside it; that would take her to the back 


208 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


piazza from the outside, no doubt. It seemed quiet, and 
she thought herself safe for a moment and stood with her 
hand on the door-post, looking out over a sunny lawn, 
flecked with long shadows from a group of elms. How 
pretty it was, how peaceful! Could it be possible that the 
one who had loved it best and longest was lying upstairs 
needing all the help that nurse and doctor and pastor could 
give her to try to reconcile her to death or to strengthen 
her to bear pain ? The sun still shone, and the honeysuckles 
and the elms and the dahlias did not “ dofl their gaudy 
trim ” ; almost they w^ere flaunting it before the very, win- 
dows of that chamber of suffering. Nature can’t be counted 
on, then, either! 

She heard a man’s hurried steps in the room behind her, 
and turned, and there stood Paul, arrested and startled 
probably by the vision of a lovely girl in the open door of 
his den, her light, sweeping dress and the outline of her 
figure illumined by the late afternoon sunbeams that lay 
athwart the lawn. She hurriedly stepped down upon the 
grass. 

“ Is there any path around the house this way ? ” she 
asked, confused. “Because Mrs. Warren sent down word 
for me to wait and drive her home, and I don’t want to stay 
in the drawing-room with all those people there ” 

“ There is a path,” he said, indicating it, “ through those 
boxwood bushes — ^but ” 

“ Thank you,” she returned, starting toward the path 
before he could finish his sentence. He had a telegraph- 
blank in his hand, and it was conceivable that he would like 
his room to himself for at least a little while. There was 
a bench between the boxwood bushes, where she sat down. 

“ This mustn’t happen again,” she said to herself seri- 
ously. “T am not angry. It’s nobody’s fault, not even 
mine, for I didn’t know till I got in it that it was his den. 
I suppose he thinks I did. Well, it’s not important what 
he thinks. But for me, it’s most important that I find out 
what is right and dignified, and that I do it. And coute 
que coute I’m not coming to this house once again this 
Bummer.” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


209 


And she did not. 

That evening, late, Sarah returned, looking a little tired 
but still alert. She threw down her wraps and bag, kissed 
her mother and Leonora, and cast herself into a chaise- 
longue. 

“ Tell us thy news,” said her mother, taking off her 
glasses and laying down her work, and moving the lamp a 
little so that it should not shine in Sarah’s eyes. 

“ It’s good as far as it goes,” returned Sarah. “ The 
doctor would not let me stay, and I suppose I do need a lit- 
tle sleep. Miss Fairfax has revived wonderfully. The doc- 
tor says he’s sure there won’t be any return of the syncope, 
and as there’s some relief from the pain, it will soon be 
possible to get her to take food. That’s the one thing to 
keep her strength up. Heavens, mother, wasn’t I frightened 
blue this afternoon ! ” 

Thee had reason to be,” said her mother gravely. 

If Miss Borda hadn’t come just when she did ! By the 
way, useless one, I understand it’s ‘ all along o’ you ’ that 
she did come! We who had the labouring oar had been 
toiling all the night, and hadn’t got anything, and you, 
toward the end of the second day, come sailing down the 
stairs, trailing your skirts and sashes, and sit down at a 
tea-table and pour out a cup of tea and put a lump of sugar 
in it, and promptly land your fish! It looks like the black 
art. Explain yourself ! ” 

Tea draws,” said Leonora, folding up the note she had 
been writing. ^‘Next time you want a nurse, don’t waste 
your time on telegrams, but sit down and make a cup of 
tea, and wait to see what comes of it! There” pounding 
down a stamp on the envelope, “ that’s off my mind. Mrs. 
Warren, can Hora put this in the box? ” And she went out 
to look for Flora. 

Come back,” called Sarah after her; ^^I have some- 
thing important to tell you.” 

Leonora, after giving the note to the servant, came back 
rather reluctantly and stood in the doorway. “Well? I 
hope it isn’t very long, for I’m tired after all I’ve done 
to-day.” 


210 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“I wanted to tell you,” said Sarah, ^‘what Paul thought 
of your supreme effort, your — it must be admitted — unex- 
pected success. It was this evening; I was trying to see 
that he got his dinner a little comfortably. Such a turmoil, 
mother, in that house! You’d have thought there wasn’t a 
servant in it and that a dinner had never been served there 
before.” 

“ Thee knows I’ve always told thee there’s such a thing 
as keeping house too well. Miss Fairfax let her ser- 
vants come to her for everything, and now they don’t 
know how to do anything when she’s not there to tell 
them.” 

“ Exactly. The cook’s all right, but the others are no 
more good than the keys of a piano when there’s nobody to 
play on it. Miss Fairfax was always dear and sweet and 
clever in her own way, but she never had any executive 
ability, and of course Miss Alida hadn’t — good old narrow 
thing! But talking of executive ability, commend me to 
Miss Borda! I thought I had a little of it, but I was a 
child, an idiot child at that, once she was in the room. 
She didn’t boss, she hadn’t any professional airs, she didn’t 
seem to do very much herself, but she showed us what to 
do, and we did it and were thankful. Poor Emerson ! He’s 
good as gold, but he does fuss, and I’ve seen him lose his 
head on more than one occasion, and this was one of them. 
I never saw a man more rattled than he was when Miss 
Fairfax had that attack this afternoon. And as for Paul, 
he was dazed. He didn’t lose his head, but he naturally 
didn’t know what to do, never having had it to do before. 
He was white to the lips, and he took a sudden resolution 
to go to town himself and bring back a carload of doctors 
and nurses, whether they would or no. And I think he 
would have got them — money will do anything. I’m sure 
during that half-hour he would have paid twenty thousand 
dollars for a thoroughly reliable nurse and a doctor that 
was sure of himself. And Emerson was not sure of him- 
self; he was rattled. I am sorry to say it, mother, but he 
was rattled. He tried ten different things in that half-hour, 
and he didn’t let any of them have a chance to act. Ho, 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


211 


Leonora, we were in a bad way when that find of yours 
walked in ! ” 

“ I’m glad you see me in my true light for once. But 
I’m waiting to hear the important thing you had to tell me. 
I’m tired, and I’m not going to wait much longer.” 

“Oh, I’m just coming to the point! I’ve only got to 
ask Edward something before I forget it. Edward ! Edward ! 
Come here a minute, won’t you? I’m so tired! ” 

The study-door was open and Edward heard her and 
came across the hall. 

“Tell me all about Miss Borda. Quick! I never felt 
more curious about anybody in my life ! ” 

“ Well, that is saying a good deal for the way you feel 
now, Sarah ! ” 

“ Where did you hear of her ? What did she come to 
you for ? What do you know of her history ? ” 

“What do I know of her history? Well, at two-forty 
this afternoon — no, to be more accurate, at five minutes of 
three, for it must have taken her at least fifteen minutes 
to get from the station here; certainly, if she had to hunt 
up one of Brewster’s old hacks and trundle up here, it would 
have taken as long as to have walked, and I didn’t see if she 
walked or drove ” 

“ I didn’t ask you whether she came on foot or in a 
carriage.” 

“If you’ll give me time! You asked me what I knew 
of her history, and you are displeased when I attempt to tell 
you with accuracy the very beginning of my knowledge of 
it. At five minutes of three o’clock I had never to my recol- 
lection heard the name of Borda. At ten minutes of four, 
when we parted, I had as much knowledge of her personal 
history as you have — even less, for you know that she has 
been trained for a nurse, and I didn’t know it.” 

“But what did she come to you for? That’s what I 
want to get at.” 

“ She came to me at the instigation of one or two persons 
to consult me about a work in which they are interested.” 

“ What kind of a work, and why did they send to you ? ” 

“Ah, why did they send to me! I have to ask myself 


212 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


very often why people send to me. I sincerely wish they 
wouldn’t.” 

“ Nonsense, Edward, you know very well why they send 
to you. It’s insincere to say you don’t.” 

“Insincerity is a grave charge. I hope it won’t keep 
you awake thinking that you made it against your only 
brother. Good-night. I’ve got two hours’ work to do yet; 
don’t interrupt me in it. Good-night, mother, and good- 
night, Leonora; don’t let Sarah keep you awake till all 
hours with her speculations ! ” The study-door closed, and 
Leonora felt relieved. 

She knew that Amy had never heard of Miss Borda’s 
existence, and it was certain Miss Borda would never pub- 
lish the matter on which she came to Comberford to consult 
the rector. 


CHAPTEE VIII 


W HEN Leonora went up to her room, not having got 
from Sarah the text of Paul’s pronouncement upon 
her, she found a foreign letter on her table which 
had lain there unnoticed since six o’clock. She seized it 
eagerly ; the sight of it quite drove everything else out of her 
mind for the moment. It was post-marked Andecy, and she 
recognised the writing of an English sister — one of the 
younger choir sisters — to whom she was much attached. It 
was a fat letter, and it had double postage. 

“Now I shall hear something about poor Pepita,” she 
thought as she tore it open and pulled the lamp toward her. 

“ My dear Leonora : 

“ I know you will want to know all about your poor peni~ 
tente, and nobody can tell you better than 1. I will begin 
at the beginning, for I don’t know whether anybody else has 
had time to write you about her arrival. It was early one 
morning, and I saw reverend mother, looking troubled, come 
out of the parlour with a stranger. She caught sight of me 
and called me and said I was to take this lady to the refec- 
toire for some breakfast and then to send a lay sister to take 
her to her room in the tour, where she was to lodge. 

“ The stranger seemed to be afraid of being seen, for she 
kept behind the mother and had her veil down. I took her 
to the refectoire, but she didn’t want any breakfast, and told 
me in a hard, brusque sort of way — as if I had been a servant 
— to take her to her room. We crossed the garden and went 
into the tour, and there she looked round and examined the 
lock on the door and asked me if anybody else was lodged 
there. I told her No — that la baronne who rented it by the 

213 


214 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


year had gone away for several months, and that she would 
be quite alone if she didn’t mind it. She said, with a sharp 
laugh, she didn’t mind it. She put up her veil and asked if 
nuns talked about people who came to them. I was fright- 
ened ; she was ghastly white, and there were great dark rings 
under her eyes — and such eyes ! They fairly blazed. I didn’t 
wonder reverend mother looked troubled. I told her we were 
forbidden by our Rule to do that, and that besides we didn’t 
have much time to talk about things that did not concern 
our work. She asked, again brusquely, what work we had to 
do. All this time she was walking restlessly about the room 
looking out of the small windows and pulling at the fasten- 
ings of them. I said we were a teaching order. She looked 
at me disdainfully and asked whom we taught. I felt like 
saying not poodles and parrots, but I forbore and said ‘ little 
children and young girls.’ 

“ ‘ Poor children ? ’ 

‘No,’ I said, ‘ children of the upper classes.’ Then she 
said I might go. And I went. I wanted to tell the reverend 
mother that I thought she ought to be watched. But then 
I told myself that notre mere no doubt knew all about it, 
and that it was not my business in any case, and so I didn’t 
speak of it to any one. 

“ The next afternoon at five it was my turn to guard the 
children in the chapel at Salut. It was a First Friday. The 
altar was beautiful— I never saw it look nicer ; all a glory of 
fiowers and lights; and I never get tired of seeing the two 
hundred children in their white veils and the nuns in their 
stalls, when there is Adoration. My place to guard the chil- 
dren was nearest the Strangers’ Chapel, which, you know, is 
dark. I happened to glance, I don’t know how or why, to- 
ward the front row, and there I saw her sitting. There was 
light enough to see her face, which was always white and 
wasted, and her eyes looked as large as they had looked the 
day before. She had forgotten that she was afraid of people, 
she had forgotten everything. I think it was the sight of the 
little children — the tots of three and four in their white 
veils, who came in two and two together and made their rev- 
erence before the altar — that gave her that hungry look. She 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


215 


had stretched out her hands, which were twisted together 
tight; her breath came panting; she never stirred. But by- 
and-by I saw that her eyes were fixed on the altar, and that 
she wasn’t thinking of the children any more. I know, I am 
sure, that it came to her then — for the next time I looked 
at her her eyes had such a softened, different expression — it 
was after the priest had given the Benediction. Poor thing ! 
she had not known it was Salut; she didn’t know what it 
meant, and she hadn’t even knelt when they sang the Tantum 
Ergo and when the bell rang, but sat there like an image, 
with her eyes fixed on the priest and with her hands clutched 
tight together. After that I had to attend to the children, 
and went with them; and by-and-by I had to come back to 
the chapel for Office. The lights were all out on the altar, 
and there weren’t more than a dozen or fifteen sisters in the 
stalls. But she was still there in the same place, though she 
had got down on her knees and I could hear her sobbing low. 
I had to go away after Office, and I didn’t see her again till 
the next day. She was there in the same spot, the only differ- 
ence was she was on her knees and didn’t get off them all the 
time. That night reverend mother sent for me and told me 
that she had seen I was looking tired out for some time past 
and that the warm weather was too much for me and that 
she had made up her mind to send me to Andecy for a rest. 
There were two or three lay sisters to be sent next day and 
she wanted me to be ready to go at the same time; and she 
said she wished me especially to look after the American 
lady, who was going, too. 

^ I put her in your charge,’ she said. ‘ I don’t know that 
there is anything that I need tell you about her ; she is ill, as 
you will see for yourself. Look well after her comfort, and 
get the doctor for her as soon as you arrive. And see that 
she has a chance to talk to the priest if she wants to. She 
is most anxious to get away from Paris and to have no one 
know where she is; you will humour her, of course, in this 
last point and in everything else that is not unreasonable. 
She tells me she is a Catholic by baptism, but she seems en- 
tirely ignorant of th6 faith. Any questions she asks you, you 
will answer and give her every help possible. All the rest is 


216 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


witli our Lord. About ber life, I am afraid it has not been 
a good one ; but that is neither my affair nor yours. She will 
tell the priest, no doubt, all that is necessary for him to 
know.^ Then the mother told me about myself, and what 
I was to do about Office and rest and all that, and told me 
to write her fully once a week. We went the next day, and 
before we had been two days at Andecy I was sure that the 
poor thing was dreadfully ill; the doctor said so, too. She 
did not seem to suffer pain, but she was burning up, one 
would say, with some inward fire. Each day her breath came 
shorter than the day before. At first she took little walks 
into the woods not far from the old chateau, but gradually 
she gave them up and only crawled out into the garden and 
sat quietly in the sun. The priest used to go out to talk to 
her very often. I don’t know what he said to her, but it 
seemed to content her. She was very gentle ; all that rough- 
ness that she showed the first day I saw her was gone ; after 
that morning I never heard her say anything rude or brusque. 
The lay sisters all adored her and could not do too much for 
her. She grew very fond of me and never wanted me out 
of her sight. It seemed odd to be so fond of her and so 
much with her and yet not even know her name, but to 
this moment I don’t know what it is. She had two little 
miniatures, the faces of two little girls, set in brilliants. I 
always thought they must be her children. When she grew 
too ill to go out any more she would have them on the pillow 
by her and look at them by the hour, and she asked me to 
pray a good deal for them, and told me their names. The 
only earthly preoccupation she had, seemed to be lest the 
jewels in a little chamois bag she always carried should not 
hold out to pay for her board and the doctor. Every week 
she would take one out and give it to me, and I could not 
persuade her that it was too much. I told her she ought to 
keep them for those two little girls, but she shuddered and 
said no. One day she told me if there were any jewels left 
when she died she wanted them to be given to the reverend 
mother, and to ask her to have a Mass said sometimes for 
the two little girls, that they might grow up good and might 
be kept from harm. One day the priest came and gave her 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


217 


conditional baptism and a few days after she made her first 
communion. You know how sweet the chapel is at Andecy; 
it was full of flowers that morning and the sisters sang beau- 
tifully. She said hardly anything all that day, but lay quiet 
and looked most peaceful. 

“You remember the tower-room at Andecy? — she had 
that room. One day she was lying there, and I was sitting 
at the window that looks down into the old court, saying my 
Office. Presently there came the sound of a horn and the 
snorting of an automobile and people laughing and talking. 
I sprang up and stood on the ledge of the window that looks 
down upon the entrance to the courtyard. I saw a motor-car 
drawn up at the old gate below. It was the first time an 
automobile had ever passed so near, for, you know, we’re off 
the main road, and the road that leads to us isn’t smooth 
enough for them. There were three or four young women 
and men in it besides the chauffeur, who was pulling at the 
bell-rope. The young men had jumped down and were walk- 
ing about and looking up at the old stone tower, and they 
were wondering what the place was and whether anybody 
lived there and if they could get any one to help about the 
machine, which was some way out of order, and whether they 
could find any one to put them on their way, which they 
seemed to have lost. Two of the young girls were very 
pretty, and their gay clothes and their laughing seemed in- 
congrouous when you looked at the old gray ivy-grown walls 
and the great still plain out of which they seemed to rise. 
Such a silence as there always is here, you know. And the 
sweet wind that draws across the plain doesn’t ever seem to 
bring noises with it. It was like a terrible assault of the 
world upon our calm citadel. 

“ My poor invalid lifted herself upon her arm and asked 
me, trembling, what it meant. I described to her what I 
saw below; and thinking it might divert her, I said why 
didn’t she get up and look out of the window ? I helped her 
to get off the bed and I put a chair for her to sit on by the 
low window. There was a mass of ivy falling across it. She 
put her thin arm up and kept the ivy back while she looked 
out. 


218 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


‘‘ I meanwhile went back and climbed up to the high win- 
dow with the bars, through which I could see as much as she 
could. I felt quite interested and excited, as one can’t help 
feeling when anything happens in such an out-of-the-way 
lonely place. It seemed as if they never would open the 
door. I forgot all about my malade, and did not look around 
once. Finally I heard the heavy bars being drawn, and a 
sister opened the door — quite a pretty young sister, who 
seemed frightened at seeing such a crowd. The handsomer 
of the young men — quite distingue — who was, I think, the 
owner of the motor, for the chauffeur seemed to go to him 
for orders, came toward her bowing, with his cap in his hand, 
and asked her in English if she would pardon their intru- 
sion. They had not known if the chateau were occupied or 
not, but they had lost their way and were most anxious to 
know just where they were. 

When the sister had appeared one of the two girls — 
the prettier one — gave a little scream of delight and got 
out of the motor. ^ Hex ! Rex ! ’ she called out to the young 
man who was questioning the sister. ‘ It’s a convent ! What 
a lark ! Ask her to let us go in. Isn’t she a dear 1 Oh, I’m 
dying to go in ! Mahe her let us go in and see it ! What a 
romantic old place ! What a pretty habit ! ’ 

“ The young man, who had some sense of decency appar- 
ently, tried to make her stop, but she continued to chatter 
about the sister’s looks as if she had been a stuffed doll on a 
pin-cushion. Fortunately she did not understand the young 
woman’s English or the young man’s French, and turned and 
ran away. In a moment I heard my timbre rung, and I knew 
I was wanted to speak English to him. I sprang off the ledge 
and out of the room, still without looking at my patient. 
Alas ! I don’t know how it happened that I should have been 
so inconsiderate. As soon as I reached the hall the mother 
in charge told me to go to the door, explain civilly to them 
that it was not possible for them to enter, and that we regret- 
ted we could not offer them any help about the motor, but 
that there was a village two miles away that they would find, 
bearing always to the right and going through a stretch of 
wood that lay between this and the village. In the village 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


219 


they would get a machinist, no doubt, and also instruction 
about their route. I delivered my message to the handsome 
young man, who stood before the porte-cochere. He was very 
civil, and would have accepted it as final but for the impor- 
tunities of the girl who called him ‘ Eex,’ seconded by the 
other one who was with her. All these annoyed me very 
much. I found them unsympathetic and flippant, but the 
young man seemed to me better bred. Of course no conces- 
sion could be made, and with much pouting on the young 
girl’s part and very civil apologies on the young man’s, the 
door was shut and bolted. I looked through the loophole 
beside the door and watched them get in. The young man 
did not take much notice of her pouts, which cleared away 
before the chauffeur had got the churning, snorting thing 
started, and they were away out of sight before we could 
believe it. The sisters were all much excited, and we stopped 
in the hall a moment to hear my translation of the dialogue 
that had taken place, and then I ran up to the tower-room. 
Alas! what did I see? The poor thing lay on the floor by 
the window where I had left her, her white nightdress and 
her white face stained by a flow of blood from her purple lips. 
I thought she was dead, and I cried for some one to come. 
They flew up, and helped me to lift her on the bed, then ran 
away to send for the priest and the doctor. I moaned and 
cried over her and tried to revive her, but my hands shook, 
and I was so frightened I couldn’t do her very much good. 
At last I felt a little flutter of her heart and then I saw her 
lips move. I said some prayers while she should be conscious, 
and then I saw she wanted to tell me something. I put down 
my ear to her lips and after a minute I made out what she 
said: 

“ ^ Tell God — I have forgiven Kex — all — everything. And 
— that I — forgive her, too — ’ Then she seemed again to be 
gone. 

prayed avec rage that she mightn’t die without the 
sacraments, and in a few minutes I heard her breathe and 
try to speak. How I listened ! What a concentration of all 
my senses in that one ! At last I made out : 

“ ‘ Tell God — I’m not sorry for anything — now — but the 


220 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


sin — ’ She panted it out word by word, I repeated it, and 
she made what I took to be a sign that it was right ; and then 
she seemed to be gone. After that she never spoke, but I felt 
sure she knew all that the priest said when he got there and 
that it was all right. He leaned over her and told her to 
move her lips a little if she understood him, and she did. 
It was four hours before the doctor came, and then he said 
she had been dead at least two hours. We dressed her in 
white clothes and took her to the chapel; and as she lay 
there before the altar she looked very peaceful, and I began 
to wonder if she had not been pretty once. How many 
Masses we have had said for her and for the little girls! I 
can’t get it all out of my mind. I long for those little girls. 
If praying will do it, I shall have my arms around them some 
day. Write me all you know about them and where they are 
and who has care of them. Or, no — I suppose I ought not to 
ask. Maybe it’s idle curiosity; but it seems to me it is more 
like holy hope. But one never knows. Don’t write me, don’t 
tell me a word the poor thing wouldn’t want me to know. I 
would never ask to be told what might risk her secret. The 
little miniatures reverend mother has given me leave to 
fasten up in a niche of the Notre Dame des Victoires altar, 
where nobody can see them. The little bag of jewels she has 
locked up in the safe, waiting for some one to claim them. 
If nobody comes in a great many years, they will be marked 
and left to be used for some holy purpose. But I hope some 
one will claim them — I hope those little girls will come to 
claim them. Good-bye, dear Leonora. I can’t tell you how 
all this has stirred me. They say nuns read more romances 
at first-hand than people of the world read in print — and 
that’s saying a good deal, as I remember the circulating li- 
braries at home! Do not forget to answer this letter, but 
you needn’t tell me the names. I. pray for you always.” 


CHAPTEE IX 


I T was the last day of Leonora’s long visit. The Septem- 
ber storm had come and gone, and the leaves were thick 
on the grass and thin on the trees. What was left of 
the Virginia creeper over the veranda was bright red, and 
the sunshine came down brilliantly through the gaps that 
storm and season had made in the sheltered nook. Mrs. 
Warren, looking wan and thin, was sitting muffled in wraps 
in a corner where the sun shone warm. Leonora and Sarah, 
wrapped also, were walking quickly up and down the path, 
half stopping as they came near the veranda every few min- 
utes to throw the ball of conversation up to her. 

“ I tell her, mother, it will be a match,” called out Sarah 
as they turned quickly at the veranda steps, and Leonora, 
twisting back her head, called out over her shoulder as they 
paced rapidly away: 

“ And I would stake anything I own it won’t be ! ” 
Leonora looked beautiful: the keen air and the quick 
walking had made her colour quite exquisite. 

Certainly the summer has done her good,” thought Mrs. 
Warren, watching her. “ She is in perfect health. Ah me ! 
I am afraid she will need it all for what she is going back 
to, if the gossips are right, poor dear! I wish I could save 
her from it, but nobody can do that, I suppose. And she does 
not seem to have a suspicion ! ” 

The next time the pair came up the path Leonora threw 
herself down on the veranda steps near Mrs. Warren and 
declared herself tired. Sarah stood leaning on the opposite 
post of the veranda; even she had a little colour from the 
brisk exercise and the keen air. 

“ I tell you again, the affair is marching. She likes the 
221 


222 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


doctor, she condescends to his level, she is gradually getting 
interested in his ‘ education/ You see, a country doctor is 
left so far behind ; it touches her to see what he might have 
been if he had had the run of the hospitals and all that 
would have come of meeting his fellow-practitioners and 
keeping up with the times. Yes, she is interested in him; I 
feel it every time I meet her! And as for him, he is so in 
love you can see it across the street.” 

He is fifty-six, I think you said ; and his wife has been 
dead eighteen months, didn’t you tell me ? ” 

O Leonora 1 everybody can’t be rich and young and 
beautiful like you, and have the pick of the world. Why 
can’t you let poor Miss Borda comfort her tired, lonesome 
soul with her middle-aged doctor and a peaceful, pretty home 
in the country ” 

“ Why, she can comfort her soul — and welcome — ^with a 
middle-aged doctor and a little house in the country; only 
don’t let her or you bring the word love into the matter.” 

“ That’s what I call romantic nonsense, Leonora ; and I’m 
just a little bit ashamed of you.” And Sarah marched away 
to give orders to a man who was barrelling apples in the 
orchard. Leonora laughed as she looked after her. 

Sarah’s friends are impeccable,” she said. Miss Borda 
can do no wrong. If she weren’t her friend nobody would 
condemn more such a sort of marriage.” 

“ Thee never told her what brought Miss Borda to see 
Edward?” 

“ Oh, never I ” 

“ Well, I’m not sure, dear child, that this isn’t a very 
good thing for her. At thy age I shouldn’t have said so, but 
at her age I can understand what would be the value of a 
home and an honest man’s affection, even if he were middle- 
aged and a little stout.” 

“If he were one’s father, yes,” said Leonora, looking 
down; “but not one’s husband.” 

The word father seemed to weight the conversation with 
something more serious than that with which it had begun. 
There was a silence of some minutes, and then Leonora said, 
looking far off across the now sere fields to the river: 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


223 


How long it seems since that morning in June when we 
sat here and you talked to me about my mother for the first 
time! Dear Mrs. Wari*en, I can’t tell you what it has been 
for me to be here! I can’t talk about it. And I’m going 
back to I don’t know what; but I am going back a little 
older and perhaps a little better than when I came.” 

And this was a great deal for Leonora to have said. 
Mrs. Warren pressed the hand that lay across her lap. Then 
in a lighter tone Leonora went on: 

“ I’m going back to get that house started on new prin- 
ciples ; and if I change the servants every three days, I shall 
go on changing till I get the right ones. And when it comes 
to going into society, I am resolved to make the best of it 
and to try to see some good in it. It has been no end of 
help to me being here. I have seen that there’s another side 
of life besides — besides — that I’ve got to play my part in 
for a while. I don’t believe I shall ever see things just as 
my father sees them; I don’t believe I shall ever like his 
friends very much, but I’m going to make the best of them; 
at any rate, not to do anything to put myself out of touch 
with him if I can help it.” 

There was another silence, then Mrs. Warren said, “Will 
thy father be at home to-morrow to meet thee ? ” 

“No; a letter came this morning saying he’d got to go oil 
somewhere — Hot Springs, I think it is — and that will keep 
him a week or so. I’m just as well pleased. I shall have 
time to get things a little in order before he comes back.” 

Mrs. Warren tried to say something and failed; and then 
Sarah came from the orchard with some red apples in her 
hands and there was not a chance to say it. Edward was 
away at the diocesan convention. Amy had gone off pout- 
ing to pay some visits to people who were beginning to scent 
her budding importance as an heiress. The Perkins cottage 
was closed for the winter, and the Reverend Davidge had got 
some one to supply his pulpit for three months while he 
went to Europe to get over his disappointment. There had 
been a bad quarter of an hour, and Leonora had had to refuse 
him in plain terms. Miss Fairfax was, week by week, less 
acutely suffering; the dull monotony of the sick-room was 


224 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


as much ameliorated as was possible by Miss Borda’s skill 
and Dr. Emerson’s constant attendance. Paul bad gone back 
to business, but came out every week for a day or two. 
Sarah was constantly at the bouse, and Mrs. Warren went 
sometimes, but Leonora bad never been there since the after- 
noon she took Miss Borda to them on approbation. It 
amused her to think that this lady bad, through her, met her 
middle-aged fate. 

And after all the summer was over ! Everything seemed 
to have drawn to an end, and the actors in its little drama to 
have been dispersed and to have taken other engagements. 
In a way, Leonora had been unhappy at first at the thought 
of going; but once her mind was made up to it and her 
preparations begun, she would have been sorry to change 
her plans. She was young, and youth means courage. She 
was well, and health demands work. Yes, she must do some- 
thing — something that would satisfy the energy that is nat- 
ural to twenty. As has been said, she had few illusions left 
about making a home for her father. He would not change 
his habits and stay any of his waking hours in the house, 
no matter how charming she made it. But she would do 
her part and make it comfortable, and make it such as he 
dictated. And after a while, who could tell, when he was 
older, if he should be ill, if from any cause he should grow 
weary of his present life, there it would be for him to turn 
to. It would at least have the merit of being familiar and 
not involving radical material changes. Yes, that should 
be her aim ; not very meritorious, not very ambitious, rather 
a slow measure to tread, but still what was set before her, 
and therefore good for her to recognise as that divine thing, 
her duty. 

As the hard rattling train bore her away from her only 
friends on this side the Atlantic her heart did sink a bit; 
but before the journey’s end, she was almost sure how it 
was all to turn out, and was quite reconciled to the long 
waiting and the meagre reward. ‘‘Bray a fool in a mortar 
and his folly will remain with him.” Bray youth in a 
mortar and hope will be the residuum. 


PART III 



CHAPTEK I 


I T was the middle week of November. Leonora had read 
American stories about Thanksgiving Day, and the 
festival had rather taken - hold of her fancy. She and 
her father had not any family to gather about them to be 
sure, but then there might be friends of her father that he 
would like to have at his board; it was an informal sort 
of day, the stories said. She climbed up on step-ladders and 
discovered treasures in old white and gold china and cut- 
glass. She had a box of old silver of her mother’s taken 
out of storage. A thrill of pleasure accompanied the 
thought that there should not be anything on the table that 
night that was not really colonial. No shams for her. The 
only thing she could not be dead sure of was the linen, but 
the chests of that up in the attic were yellow enough to 
have come over in the Mayflower, She insisted to herself 
that it did come over in the Mayflower. Then the menu; 
she read everything she could find that bore on the social 
life of the times: biography, fiction, history — snatches, of 
course, of all, but it filled a good many of her lonely even- 
ings. When she had assimilated the oyster-soup, the turkey 
and cranberry, the duck and apple sauce, the boiled ham, 
the sweet potatoes, the celery, the almonds and raisins, the 
pumpkin-pie, the whipped cream, the floating-islands, the 
wine- jelly, the pound-cake, the plum-cake, the chocolate-cake, 
with all their frostings and decorations, she sent for the 
chef to come up to her. He felt a great horror for this 
primitive sort of food, as if one should dine off grass and 
clover with the cows, but he liked his place, and cloaked 
his contempt, and promised to experiment on the different 
confections before the day came, that he might make a 
success of them. 


227 


228 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


She was not so sure about the wines. But she knew 
there was gocd port in the house, and good sherry, and 
what were those tall, slim, finely cut glasses for, if they 
didn’t have champagne in colonial times? She would ask 
her father, when he came back, about the champagne. But 
of course they must have cider, too, and how about punch? 
The plot thickened; but if she could only interest her 
father about it, it would be worth all the trouble. 

The first night he got back from Hot Springs, she did 
not broach the subject, but the next evening he dined at 
home, and she tried to bring it before him in a favourable 
light. He was discouraging: that sort of thing didn’t take 
in Hew York. Besides, there were very few persons in town 
yet, and the few that were always went away for a couple 
of days at Thanksgiving. Oh, but, Leonora said, mightn’t 
there be a stray man here or there who couldn’t get away? 
And some bright young married people who would be glad 
of something a bit different from the ordinary? He didn’t 
know anybody, he was afraid, who wouldn’t think it a bore, 
he was sure it would fall very flat — besides — he didn’t say 
what besides, but got up and gave orders about something 
to a servant, lit his cigar, and went away to the club. The 
disappointment was considerable to Leonora, but she didn’t 
give up. He did not dine at home the next night, but 
the following one he came in. 

Leonora took her courage in both hands and again talked 
about the dinner. The servant brought in the old silver 
which she had disinterred from the storage warehouse and 
gradually her father grew interested. She had not seen 
him so nearly human since she had come back with him 
from Europe. The old pieces of silver had memories for 
him, no doubt; besides, they were heirlooms and of intrinsic 
value. There had been much bickering and finally even a 
law-suit over them, which had been decided in his father- 
in-law’s favour. The cut-glass shone like diamonds since 
the dust of long years had been washed off ; about that there 
was much to tell. And the old white and gold china, with 
the entwined initials of bride and groom dead two hundred 
years and more, had been brought from Canton by a Han- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


229 


tucket ancestor, who was master of a ship that later was 
drafted into the service of the struggling infaort States. All 
these long-slumbering memories awoke, and with them awoke 
some faint echoes of the virility long overlaid by the low 
aims and sloth of an idle life and too much money. 
Leonora’s intelligence and quick enthusiasm pleased him; 
unconsciously to himself he caught a little glow from her. 
It was a very happy evening for her, and certainly must 
have been agreeable to him; he never consciously did any- 
thing he did not like to do and he quite forgot his usual 
hour of going to the club. It was eleven o’clock before he 
remembered it. 

“ Don’t forget to decide whom we are to invite to our 
famous dinner,” Leonora said, as she helped him to put 
on his overcoat. 

It rather dragged the next night, he seemed occupied 
with something else, and the night following he dined out. 
Thanksgiving was drawing near : Leonora’s preparations 
were all made, and she grew rather anxious about the guests. 
By dint of constant reminder, she got him to mention the 
names of two or three men whom she knew he saw daily. 

“ Shall I write to them,” she asked. 

“ No, no. I’ll see them.” 

She comforted herself with the informality of such 
domestic festivals. The day was approaching nearer and 
nearer and he was getting less and less definite about the 
dinner, it seemed more and more to irk him to bind him- 
self to anything. It was a little thing, they were her 
father’s friends; if he did not want to ask them to his 
house, why should she urge it on him? But she had spent 
so much thought and time about this dinner. She knew 
she was unreasonable to care so much; but she did care, 
and she knew she was fretted more than she ought to have 
been. It is one thing to know you are unreasonable, and 
quite another thing to stop being so, in domestic matters. 

If he would only say he didn’t want the dinner! If he 
would only acknowledge frankly that it bored him, and 
tell her not to go on with the preparations, and if he would 
stop this shilly-shallying and saying he hadn’t been able 


230 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


to see this or that man and it would be time enough to- 
morrow, and he’d been very occupied and all that sort of 
rot! Dinner was a fixed fact, she said to herself; one dines 
or one doesn’t dine; what could be more humbling than 
not to know what to say to the servants who came to her 
for definite orders about the things to be cooked or the 
linen to be used, or the old silver to be brought down ? 

It was the day before Thanksgiving; she had sworn to 
herself that not a word should pass her lips that morn- 
ing that had any reference to the dinner. Her father had 
had his coffee in his room, as he often did. She wan- 
dered about in her own rooms, listening for all sounds in 
his. If he did not call her she should not go down to 
ask him anything. There was a little more pulling out 
and slamming in of drawers than usual in his dressing- 
room, a few sharper words than ordinary to his valet; and 
she heard him go down the stairs. She listened till the 
front door banged after him, and a silence fell, broken only 
by a suppressed guffaw from the so-lately obsequious ser- 
vants, and a low conversation interspersed with occasional 
tittering, as they discussed matters at the head of the 
basement stairs. 

Leonora shut herself into her room and sat down. She 
leaned her head on one hand, with the other she beat a 
tattoo on the table by her. What was she going to do about 
it? She knew she was unreasonable and bad-tempered. If 
she had been reasonable she would never have got in this 
position; she would have treated the whole matter in the 
lightest manner, glad if she succeeded in amusing her father 
at home, even if but for one night, taking it as quite in 
the course of things if he disappointed her at the last 
minute. Very bad-tempered that she could not help feel- 
ing a bitter antagonism toward him, a strong revolt against 
being subject to him. What part did she play in his life? 
NTone. The servants were useful to him; for her there 
was no place; she began to see that, except for the fact 
that she was his daughter and that people would talk about 
it if she did not live with him, he would be glad to pro- 
vide for her somewhere else. Every day seemed to put 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


231 


a greater distance between them. The whole position was 
impossible, she ought to have known it would be from the 
first. He had taken her absence for the summer as a great 
relief; he had inaugurated her return from the country 
by the most shabby treatment. He had been more alive 
to her presence in the early days of their arrival from 
Europe. Had she disappointed him? Had he not yet for- 
gotten the Meadowburn episode? It did not seem to her 
that he had any feeling about her, one way or the other. 
He was preoccupied, his interest was elsewhere, she was 
nothing to him, that was all. 

To irritate her more, the maid knocked at the door to 
know if the chef could see mademoiselle for some last 
orders about to-morrow’s dinner. She sent word she was 
busy at the moment, but would see him before she went 
out, and she told the maid to order the carriage for eleven 
o’clock. When she went out at eleven she saw the man 
for a moment and gave him some final order, saying that 
it was possible the dinner would be smaller than she had 
at first thought, but she would tell him later in the day. 
She felt that all the servants knew exactly how matters 
stood and were laughing in their sleeves and aprons; but 
that was a mistake, for a fine, calm manner will deceive 
the lower classes who are not capable of it themselves, self- 
control being a note of higher civilisation. 

It is an admirable thing to go out of doors when you are 
fretted indoors. How small the “ indoors ” looks ; how the 
horizon, moral and material, broadens when you are out 
under the dome of heaven. It was a fine autumn day. She 
did many errands which kept her mind off her private 
wrongs, and then she took a long drive into the suburbs 
and bought a glass of milk and a roll at a baker’s and got 
out and walked an hour in the Park, and did not reach home 
till three o’clock. 

It was very evident as she came in that something of 
interest awaited her. A district-telegraph boy sat waiting 
in the hall. A couple of valises stood by the door, two 
men were bringing down a small travelling-trunk. And the 
valet, looking anxious and carrying his master’s dressing- 


232 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


case and overcoat, was hurrying down the stairs. His mas- 
ter, he said, had had a sudden summons to go West on 
some important matter. He had not even had time to 
come home to give orders about his packing, but had been 
obliged to go off to attend to a business engagement before 
the train started. He, the valet, was to meet his master 
at the Delaware & Lackawanna station with the luggage, 
in three-quarters of an hour. 

“He did not send a note for me?” Ho, Baptiste 
thought not; the other servants thought not. There had 
been such a hurry, Mr. Hungerford had not had time to 
tell the valet, whom he had summoned to the club, anything 
but his orders about what was to be packed. 

“ Tell him to call me up on the telephone from the 
station,” said Leonora. 

“ I am sure he will if there’s time, mademoiselle, but 
one can’t always get the telephone at those big places.” 

And the door closed behind him and the telegraph-boy 
and the valises, and the cab rolled off. Leonora sauntered 
into the parlour and then went upstairs very nonchalantly, 
while the servants decorously waited till she had disap- 
peared and then went downstairs to have it out among them- 
selves. 

She shut herself into her room for a few minutes, and 
stood at the window looking into the street but not seeing 
anything. She was so very angry! He had had time to 
send for his clothes, but not time to send her a line, a 
message even, to say where he was going. He simply had 
forgotten her existence. Then she said to herself she would 
make all the excuses possible, no doubt he had been greatly 
hurried, and no doubt he had been for so many years ac- 
customed to being responsible to no one for his goings 
and comings that he had forgotten he had a daughter now, 
to whom it was civil to say good-bye before a journey. 
She went stealthily to the telephone and waited by it till 
the hour for the train was past. Then perhaps he would 
send a despatch from the first stop on the train. Ho, he 
didn’t do that. And now to get through dinner before 
those servants! 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


233 


All the evening she was, unconsciously to herself, keenly 
listening for the door-bell. She refused to believe he would 
not send a despatch from the train after he had fairly 
started and the hurry of getting off was over. At nearly 
ten, the bell rang and the servant brought in a despatch. 
Ah, he had not forgotten! With a sudden revulsion of 
feeling and a pang of self-reproach for her undutifulness, 
she opened it. It was from her dressmaker. 

“ Not able to send colonial dress as promised, will send 
without fail in morning.” 

Leonora read this over three or four times. What queer 
constructions brains are. She said to herself deliberately: 
‘‘ It’s a good thing this came. The servants will think it’s 
from my father. Yes, it’s a very good thing it came.” The 
revulsion of feeling and the pang of self-reproach had van- 
ished into limbo, they seemed to have left no trace. She 
had arrived at a point where she felt she did not care a 
farthing any longer whether he remembered to telegraph to 
her or to write to her or to tell some one else to write or to 
telegraph to her; at least, she said to herself she didn’t 
care, and she believed she didn’t. She got up and tore 
the despatch in very little bits and threw it into the fire. 

“ Mr. Hungerford is called away suddenly,” she said. 
“ Tell the cook not to go on with the preparations for to- 
morrow’s dinner. I may dine alone. I will tell him in 
the morning. King up a messenger for me. Or no, I will 
try the telephone first.” 

She went upstairs to the telephone. She could not be 
sure that the maid was not behind a curtain or somewhere, 
but she was, she found, quite dexterous and clever and cool. 
She rang up imaginary numbers, and she held wires and 
she rang off, and the one-sided conversations in a high 
key were naturally adapted to the intelligence of the maid, 
being addressed to it. Then after a good while spent in 
this fictitious intercourse she said good-bye to a bogus Cen- 
tral and rang off. To how many guests she had explained 
matters, and postponed the dinner, till my father’s return.” 
She felt perfectly satisfied that the servants’ curiosity was 
baffled, that they would never know the humiliation that 


234 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


had been put upon her. After this she meant to be cir- 
cumspect. All the demarches socially must come from her 
father. She would try faithfully to carry out his wishes 
in the house. She thought it promised to be a sufficiently 
lonely life to suit even the nuns, who had been so anxious 
about the temptations of the great world for her! 

Next day she sent the mince-pies and the sweets to 
some charity she had read about in the papers, and she 
took a drive in the Park, and she wrote some letters, and 
then dined alone in the evening. No despatch came from 
her father; she did not expect any, and she did not care, 
she told herself. It was all in the day’s work. She was 
not the first one who had had no home, she saw many 
people in the streets who looked as if they had none. 

The next day a letter came from her father, dated at 
some Western town she had never heard of, telling her in 
general terms that he had been called away by business and 
had not had time to see her before he left. The time of his 
absence was uncertain. He would not probably be gone 
longer than a fortnight. He would write to her from time 
to time; if there was anything she had to communicate to 
him, a letter or a despatch addressed to this place would 
always reach him, etc. This did not seem to invite cor- 
respondence and she considered it unnecessary, for the mo- 
ment, to reply. 


CHAPTER II 


T eh days passed; a letter came ordering- his gray 
riding-breeches to be sent to him, and saying noth- 
ing about his return. Two weeks more, and then a 
despatch arrived; he would reach home that night. It was 
nearing Christmas, and Leonora felt much disappointment 
that she should not be able to run up to Connecticut, now 
lying in the snow, to spend it with her beloved Warrens. 
Of course it would not be nice to go away the day after 
her father came back and to leave him alone for the 
Christmas reunion — save the mark! She felt he would carp 
at it, and that in some way it would be considered to be 
wrong; so she sent her gifts by express and telegraphed her 
disappointment. 

She stayed up to meet him; he arrived an hour behind 
time, cold and cross, even belligerent. There was not much 
repose in the manner of the valet, who made ten mistakes 
about the luggage in as many minutes. Leonora felt calm 
and superior, but she reflected Baptiste had been under fire 
for hours probably, and she was coming on the field quite 
fresh. 

Hext morning her father sent for her to come to his room. 
She was dressed to go out, quite charming in her new winter 
costume. She found him still in bed, unshaved and not in 
a good temper, some dumb fumblings of conscience prob- 
ably adding to the protests of his chilled liver. Around him 
on the coverlid lay an accumulation of letters which had 
not been forwarded to him, as he did not order it done, 
including notes of invitation, cards, etc. 

“ Why didn’t you open these things ? ” he said ; “ they 
ought to have been answered.” 

235 


236 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“ I did open those which I was sure were invitations/^ 
she said. “ Generally, for receptions and things, there were 
duplicates for me, which I answered. I could not open notes 
which might not have been invitations, when I did not know 
how long you would be away.” 

“ Here’s a dinner for to-morrow,” he said, with growing 
irritation, taking up a note. “What must they think of 
me? It’s a disgraceful negligence.” 

“ That ? ” said Leonora, leaning over and looking at it. 
“ Oh, I know ! That’s all right. That must be the person 
I saw two or three days ago in a shop. She came fluttering 
up to me and asked me if I were not Miss Hungerford, and 
said her husband had sent you an invitation to a man’s 
dinner and was wondering whether you were out of town. 
I set her little mind at rest, and explained why you had not 
answered the note and that there was so much doubt about 
the day of your return that she’d better not count upon you. 
And for those,” turning over several cards lightly, “I at- 
tended to them all, regretting for us both.” 

“ You have not been anywhere since you have been back 
from the country ? ” 

“Why, no,” she answered, unconsciously drawing herself 
up and looking at him. For a moment it flashed through 
her mind how differently she had felt last June when he 
brought her to book about her Meadowburn visit. Now 
she was not afraid. She was not ashamed. She felt she 
had grown strangely older since he talked to her so fiercely 
about it that night, and then gave in so supinely in the 

course of an hour. She had not known it then, but ho 

had been glad to get rid of her and to have his freedom. 

She had grown wiser, she had grown much wiser! 

“You haven’t been anywhere?” he repeated between 
his teeth, looking at her as he lay propping his head up 
on his hand. 

“ Why, no,” she repeated steadily. “ Why, how could I ? 
I don’t know these people’s names even, most of them; I 
couldn’t know whether you wanted me to visit them. I had 
no one to go with me.” 

“ Damn it ! ” he exclaimed, lifting himself up and throw- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


237 


ing a note toward her, “you shan’t have that excuse. You 
shall have a chaperon. There’s somebody thinks she can 
fill the bill. See to it. Send for her at once.” 

Leonora turned pale. “I hope you’ll think twice be- 
fore you force somebody I don’t know on me, papa. It 
is a serious matter having somebody always in the house, 
always at the table. You yourself would find it very dis- 
agreeable. If she isn’t really a well-bred person, it would 
seem to turn you out of house and home. If she were 
inquisitive or a gossip it would be intolerable. Don’t, don’t, 
papa. Think twice before you destroy all my pleasure and 
perhaps your own comfort.” 

“ It’s destroyed pretty promptly the moment I get home, 
with all your complaints about being left alone and not 
knowing anybody. I can’t go away — on business — or any- 
thing — without feeling that I’m a monster of cruelty. Ho, 
no, send for the woman and see what she’s like.” 

“ Papa, I entreat you.” 

“ You needn’t entreat me, I’ve made up my mind. Every- 
body will be talking if you don’t go out this winter. I 
suppose they have begun to talk already. I can’t be bound 
down in this way. I’ve lived my own life too long. Send 
for the woman, I tell you. I used to know her: she’s all 
right.” 

“ But, papa, listen to me,” and she spoke quite firmly. 
“A man can’t realise it, probably, but for me to have a 
woman in that position always in the house, always to be 
arranged for, always to be reckoned with, kept down in her 
place, or propped up in it, as the case may be, always on 
my mind, either whining with hurt feelings or intolerable 
with familiarity — believe me, it would be a purgatory for 
me, and you don’t want me to be unhappy, I am sure, this 
first winter that I’m with you.” 

He made some gruff reply and turned his head away. 

“Just try this one thing, papa; try going out with me 
yourself for a month! Nothing will give me a better time, 
for you are so popular, everybody says. And times when 
you really can’t go, get some married woman or other whom 
you know to chaperon me. If it doesn’t work, at the 
16 


238 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


end of a month or six weeks it is time enough to get some- 
body. Please try this. You will not be sorry. ” 

He knit his brows. She could see something in the sug- 
gestion had struck him and made him waver. What was 
it? she wondered. Hot consideration for her pleasure, cer- 
tainly. She fancied when she had said “ inquisitive or a 
gossip ” that she had seen him wince. And that there had 
been a look of relief when she had said “ a month or six 
weeks.” Well, it was like a man to feel he could not be 
bound any longer than a month or six weeks! Perhaps 
she could coax him on from month to month. He felt,' she 
could see, a little ashamed of his weakness in giving in; 
so she thought she would make it easy for him. 

I know it’s a great nuisance for you having a young 
girl to look after, but I’ll be as little trouble as I can. 
Just let me know what bothers you and I’ll stop it. You 
shall not go to balls any oftener than you like, and for 
receptions and day things. I’ll get some dear old frump 
and pay her by the hour. And if I have days at home 
(you do want me to have days at home, don’t you? The 
house is so handsome since it’s been done over I think 
people ought to see it), if, as I have said, I have days 
at home, I can have the old frump and dress her up, or 
when I get to know people I can ask some nice young 
married woman to receive with me. You’ll not be bound 
at all, you know; just for a little while you’ll come in, ‘to 
give the place a tone,’ like Maggie Murphy’s organ. It won’t 
bother you, it won’t fret you, I think you’ll even get to 
like it. Only don’t let’s have the chaperon, dear papa, don’t 
let’s have the chaperon.” 

“You think it’s all so easy,” he growled, but it was 
the giving-in growl; she recognised it. “You think it’s all 
so easy, but where will you get your old tabby? You are 
new to it all, you won’t find it so easy. Here’s this woman, 
she’ll do, and it will save all the nuisance of looking one 
up.” 

Leonora glanced quickly through the note on the cov- 
erlid which her father indicated with a gesture. “ Oh, 
I’m sure she’d be very binding! She talks gushingly about 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


239 


‘ old times.’ She’d fawn upon you and spy upon you and 
try to get things out of you till you’d fly the house. Oh, 
I can see it all. And look, at the end of the note, she 
brings in the two or three names of prominent people whom 
she calls friends and underscores dearest before them, as 
if being so intimate with them were going to be an ad- 
vantage to me. As if your daughter needed her tupenny- 
hapenny help! Bah!” throwing down the note, ^Toll de 
bell for dat lubly Nell ! ’ I know you would not have her 
two hours in the house.” 

Mr. Hungerford gave a kind of grunt, which his daugh- 
ter had learned to recognise as a species of laughter in 
abeyance. Encouraged by it, she went on with a sort of 
assurance. 

“Wait till you see my figurehead. A general’s widow, 
or a clergyman’s, perhaps. She needn’t know anybody in 
New York and I hope she won’t, only, of course, she must 
be a lady. I’ll get her a handsome long dress and I shall 
choose her just as they choose the saleswomen who try 
the clothes on in the shops, for her air of distinction and 
for her straight back. And I’ll get her a street-suit, too, 
and when I have a lot of errands to do I will have her 
come and go out with me in the carriage instead of the 
maid, or if I should want to go to a matinee I’ll take 
her. And sometimes when I have tickets that I don’t want 
I will give them to her, and when there are bonbons that 
are getting stale I will press them into her hand. And 
I’ll pay her by the hour, and we’ll settle our little account 
every Saturday night, and she will be the best satisfied 
elderly person in the United States. Nobody need know 
that she isn’t living in the house and sitting on our chests 
day and night like an indigestion ! ” She paused a mo- 
ment and then said, “ Eh hieriy papa, c^est entendu, rCest-ce 
pasf^' 

“You haven’t found her yet,” growled the father. That 
she took for a consent and she kissed him lightly and 
thanked him and went away saying, “ Never fear ! I shall 
find her. You shall see.” 

And she did find her, straight back, air of distinction. 


240 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


and all. She was not a generaPs widow, but she was the 
maiden sister of a recently deceased college professor and 
she was well-connected and ill-fed. Her small economies 
had honeycombed her very soul. She had also a timid love 
of pleasure and this prospect of a glimpse into the gay 
world gave her infinite satisfaction. She had an apparent 
dignity of manner, coming from a lymphatic temperament, 
and she spoke very good Hew England English, in con- 
sequence of her scholastic milieu. But she had not real 
dignity of nature nor was she at all an intellectual person; 
she had been so long at her wits’ end about the means of 
living that she did not hesitate to accept whatever favours 
Leonora felt inclined to bestow upon her. Leonora had 
no illusions about her after the first day or two, and the 
relationship was comfortably established on a solid financial 
basis and no feelings. 


CHAPTEK III 


T he season was in full swing, everybody bad come in 
from the country and invitations rained thick and fast. 
Leonora had been to two or three balls and to many 
dinners and dinner-dances; and luncheons and teas were of 
daily occurrence. All this did not move without machinery, 
but she had mastered the machinery and in a way did not 
dislike it. The college professor’s maiden sister was kept 
very busy, and the maid was kept very busy, and the ser- 
vants of the house had no lack of occupation. She kept 
them all up to the work and she kept herself up to the 
work; she liked her pretty clothes and it did not bore 
her to give orders about them. She liked the large and 
beautiful rooms of her father’s house and the pretty effects 
to be got from lights and from flowers. But somehow there 
was no glamour over it all. She was not twenty and there 
ought to be a glamour, she said to herself. The balls, 
strangely enough, she liked better than the smaller functions, 
though she went with her father. He seemed satisfled with 
her and, of course, all his friends were about her. They 
were no more sympathetic than before, but among the rest 
— in the current that flowed outside and around the exalted 
rock of fashion on which they stood huddled, there had 
two or three times been a face, a personality, a possibility, 
that excited a hope, if not of glamour at least of human 
interest and sympathy. At the dinners, there were but the 
same set; ^‘the same dogs with different collars,” older or 
younger as the case might be, but of the same breed, fed 
on the same soup, pampered with the same pudding. At 
the small dances it was the younger set, the debutantes and 
their following — if callow youths, coaxed or driven into 

241 


242 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


service, could be called followers — who held the prominent 
place. But they, youths and maidens, all seemed to her 
alike crude and unattractive. She was of their age, but 
that seemed all there was in common. At the balls she 
attracted, incontestably, a great deal of attention, but at 
these smaller debutante functions she was frankly “ out of 
it.” Now, to be Irish, nobody likes to be out of it while 
they are in it. It chilled Leonora to go night after night 
to these stereotyped festivities and to be finding herself on 
less and less familiar terms with the young girls each night, 
and less and less attended to by the young dancing men 
who were the only representatives of their sex. 

“ I’m not making a success of it,” she said to herself 
many times as she tried to be amiable to some immature 
boy of twenty, who might chance to be her partner at a 
cotillon or to sit beside her at a dinner, silent and sullen 
or cocky and crude. ‘‘ I’m not making a success of it and 
I don’t know what’s the matter ! ” 

“That’s just New York!” exclaimed Belinda Merritt 
one night kneeling upon a chair with her elbows on the 
back as if it were a prie-dieu, on the outskirts of a cotillon 
in which she was only taking the modest part of a spec- 
tator. “ That’s just New York. There’s Leonora Hunger- 
ford, far and away the prettiest debutante of the season, 
richer than rich, and top notch as to family, sitting over 
there with that dolt of a boy for a partner, and to my 
certain knowledge she hasn’t been taken out twice the whole 
evening 1 ” 

“Why is it just New York, if I may ask?” drawled the 
man beside her, who adjusted his eye-glass and poked his 
head somewhat further forward than nature meant him 
to. “Why mightn’t it be just Boston or just any other 
city ? ” 

Now, to go back a step, Belinda had not been able to 
achieve her proud aim of being a debutante herself and 
making the whole season. The family finances had not held 
out for this. Newport had quite flattened them out and 
she had been compelled to go into strict retirement for 
the winter, till Mrs. Pelletreau had extended a friendly hand 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


243 


and dragged her out of the New Jersey mud. To do Belinda 
justice, she was grateful. She had found her level. The 
high hopes that the Touraine had home over the seas had 
been crushed under the brutal money-bags of Newport. 

“ Newport’s no place for beggars,” she had tartly told 
her mother, whose whines had become lamentable. “You 
should have known better than to bring us over. Now 
we must make the best of it till we can scrape together 
money enough to get back to Italy.” 

“ Like the organ-grinders,” sneered her elder sister. 

“ Yes, like the organ-grinders,” retorted Belinda. “ But 
remark that the organ-grinders wouldn’t pick up enough 
pennies, in the limits of an ordinary life-time, if they 
ground out the dismal strains that you and mother favour 
the world with night and day ! ” 

And Belinda wisely struck up jollier tunes and quite 
contributed to the gaiety of nations and got a lot of in- 
vitations beginning with that of Mrs. Pelletreau, which was 
the primary cause of her being at this dance, kneeling as 
if she were on a prie-dieu and contemplating the social 
whirl in which she was obliged to bear so humble a part. 

“Why is it just New York?” she reiterated to her 
neighbour with the eye-glass. “ It is just New York because 
it couldn’t happen anywhere but in New York. You see 
New York is so big that the smart set has to fight like 
grim death to keep itself exclusive. What would it be if 
it wasn’t exclusive, you know? It couldn’t be clever and 
it couldn’t be blue-blooded, you see; and it isn’t all money 
that does it, no, really it isn’t. It’s just that the people 
who have got in are determined to keep other people out, 
for there’s only just so much space, like Manhattan Island, 
and they kick out anybody who tries to crowd in at the 
door, and they stamp upon anybody’s fingers who is trying 
to climb in by the window, and they bring up their chil- 
dren to do just the same thing. There isn’t a girl here, 
nor a young man, for the matter of that, that isn’t the 
second generation of snobs. They’ve been brought up to- 
gether, they’ve played tennis together all summer and danced 
at dancing classes together all winter, ever since they were 


244 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


ten years old. It’s like a country village and a pretty 
dull one at that.” 

He of the lorgnon smiled vaguely and seemed not averse 
to further enlightenment. “ But how does this apply to 
the tall young beauty in question ? ” he asked thoughtfully. 

Is she only the first generation or is she trying to climb 
up by the window ? ” 

“ Oh,” said Belinda, with a fine disregard of metaphor, 
she’s in all right, that is, technically speaking she is, but 
she doesn’t assimilate, don’t you see, she’s a foreign sub- 
stance. Her mother is dead long ago, but her father is 
everything you could ask; unluckily, though, he’s a little 
handicapped just now, he has an affair of his own that 
is rather engrossing and he seems to think Leonora can 
take care of herself. Ho. He made the error of leaving 
her abroad to be educated, and that’s what’s the matter now. 
She came home after twelve years in a convent, and she 
doesn’t know where she’s at, you see.” 

Quite so,” he said. 

“ And then, too,^’ went on Belinda, waxing confidential, 
she made a blunder when she first started in. You see, 
she’s got pious notions, and if you’ve got pious notions, 
you’re no good here. Hobody’s got any use for you. It 
was an awful, awful pity. It will just ruin her success. 
Personally, it doesn’t prejudice me against her in the least. 
One has to overlook all sorts of things in the people one 
likes. She showed a lot of pluck about it, too. And I 
care more for pluck than anything, don’t you ? ” 

“With limitations, yes,” he said thoughtfully, shrug- 
ging slightly a pair of narrow shoulders. 

“ There ! she’s coming this way now. I haven’t seen 
her since last June. I want to speak to her. Don’t you 
want to come, too, and meet her ? ” 

For Belinda had the instinct of holding on to any rope 
she could clutch in this social sea. Who could tell when 
another man would be thrown her way? He acquiesced in 
the arrangement and walked sedately after her, while she 
made her way through the crowd coming from the dancing- 
room. Behind them all came Leonora and her hopeless 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


245 


partner. If he had been a country bumpkin he would 
have been chewing a wisp of straw instead of the few 
available hairs of his feeble straw-coloured moustache; in 
either case, the intellectual force, if not the superficial im- 
provement of it, would undoubtedly have been on the side 
of the rustic. Leonora was so glad to be released from 
him that she quite welcomed Belinda’s breezy cordiality. 

“ It’s so nice to see you,” she said, leaving her hand in 
Belinda’s as they moved toward the supper-room. “ I was 
thinking of you the other day and wondering whether you 
had come to town yet.” 

“ Well, I didn’t have to wonder about you. The papers 
had so much to say about you and your phenomenal suc- 
cess ! ” 

“ My phenomenal success ? Oh, it’s been phenomenal 
the other way. Why, Belinda, do you know I’m just the 
worst sort of a failure that you ever saw. I quite like 
the balls and the big things, but at the dances and the 
dinners for the debutantes^ I’m ashamed to say, I get left, 
every time ! ” 

“ Exactly,” said Belinda, with ready comprehension. 
“ I’d be ashamed of you if you weren’t left, in such a 
nursery mob as this. Why don’t you cut the whole thing? 
Save yourself for the big balls, give some big dinners your- 
self, do something a little striking, and heavens ! phenomenal 
won’t be in it ! ” 

“ If papa could only see it in that light,” said Leonora 
with a sigh. “Why, only next week I’ve got to have a 
debutante dance, and but for the fact that I suppose I shall 
have to lead, I should very likely sit through the whole 
cotillon in my own house. I don’t believe one of these 
striplings would come near me except to make his pro- 
found and perfunctory bow on entering ! ” 

“ Exactly, why should he come near you ? He wouldn’t 
know what to say to you, if he did; and he’d be scared 
out of his life if you said anything to him that wasn’t a 
sa portee. Ho, it’s all right for you to give ’em this dance, 
pay off your obligations to ’em, get ’em nice favours, and 
be awfully sweet to ’em, then have done with the whole 


246 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


debutante business, and never go to any of these functions 
again. Oh, I see it all, I see exactly what you ought to do ! ” 

“ If only you could make papa see it,” sighed Leonora. 

Why, it’s as plain as day. I wonder Mr. Hungerford 
can let you waste yourself in this way. Why, you have 
everything in your hand, you could do something that’s 
worth while! You could enjoy yourself, and make other 
people enjoy themselves. It’s selfish to keep that beau- 
tiful house tight shut up all the season, except for a dance 
for these stupid kids or for an occasional dinner for your 
father’s own set, just as impossible for you as the kids! 
What do you care, begging their pardon, for those club 
chums of his! And there are other people in Mew York, 
Leonora, let me tell you that there are ! ” 

Come to dinner with me to-morrow night,” said Leo- 
nora, and if papa’s at home, you’ll convert him, and if 
he isn’t, you’ll console me.” 

Belinda readily promised, the crowd parted them, and 
Leonora went home to ponder on the marvels of the un- 
expected. That she should be finding sympathy in Belinda 
and seeking counsel from her ! What could be more bizarre ! 

Belinda came to dinner the following night; Mr. Hun- 
gerford happened to be at home, and he evidently found her 
amusing. Since his return before Christmas, Leonora had 
thought him looking ill; he had been restless and irritable 
and the genial manner which strangers associated with him 
never came to light nowadays. He seemed to have some- 
thing on his mind, and instead of being diverted from it 
by the sight of his daughter, the sight of her apparently 
had the effect of adding to whatever burden it was he 
carried. But Belinda’s store of gossip and pungent criti- 
cism did him good. She ground out very merry tunes, and 
they seemed for the moment to chase away whatever it 
was that weighed upon him. But remembering the Meadow- 
burn episode, Belinda had to keep Leonora’s foibles in 
mind and be very wary in her choice of music. Belinda 
was a clever girl, a very clever girl, and if she had been 
only reasonably well brought up, the world might have 
been the better for her being in it. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


247 


She succeeded in convincing Mr. Hungerford that noth- 
ing could be worse for Leonora than being trotted round 
the ring in the pony class. It was settled before the maid 
icame for her that next week’s dance was to be Leonora’s 
farewell to the debutante set, and that Mr. Hungerford 
gave his consent to the getting out cards for some din- 
ners that were to have a flavour! and for some days, that 
would be a revelation to the frequenters of days. 

“ Don’t ■ let her do anything ridiculous,” said Mr. Hun- 
gerford uneasily after she had gone, some misgivings com- 
ing over him when she was no longer there to push her 
cause. He hated to be talked into things, and it looked 
very much as if that was just what had happened. Leo- 
nora also felt a little frightened when she remembered the 
Touraine, and Meadowburn. But she had been reviewing 
all this since the night before, and she had arrived at the 
conclusion that her last impression of Belinda at Meadow- 
burn had been favourable to her kindness of heart and 
a certain generosity. And she recognised the fact that if 
she were to please her father by any kind of success and 
make him respect her, she must have some one of her own 
age near her to keep her spirits up and with whom to 
talk it over. She had a great fear of having Mrs. Pel- 
letreau foisted on her; and she knew that with Belinda 
she could hold her own, and do as she saw fit, accept or 
reject plans or persons without fear or favour and make 
everything right by some material benefaction. 

The next week saw the new regime inaugurated. They 
shopped together for the favours; Belinda enjoyed quite 
irrationally buying costly things at other people’s expense, 
but she had good taste and knew what favours were apt 
to “ take ” and also how to get them below the market 
price. Harmony reigned on the favour question, but there 
was a little — almost imperceptible — friction when it came to 
the informal invitations to be sent to some older men. 
Belinda had had her way about several. And, confident of 
consent, she felt quite annoyed when Leonora did not rise to 
the name of Paul Fairfax. 

^^Why, he was so nice to you at Meadowburn,” ex- 


248 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


claimed Belinda. “ What I should call decidedly nice. I 
really thought, for the moment, he was quite cut up about 
your going. He didn’t come out on the yacht at all that 
day and sulked all the evening. I didn’t blame him very 
much for that, for we were all tired, even Mrs. Pelletreau 
seemed out of sorts. And at dinner the other men all 
drank a good deal, and I thought they’d never come from 
the dining-room, and when they did come Harry Lingard 
could hardly stand and he would keep talking about your go- 
ing away, and hiccoughing out ^ But what did she do it for — 
that’s what I can’t understand — that’s what I can’t under- 
stand at all ! ’ I thought it was so lucky Sancton Stock- 
well didn’t come back with us, for he would have been 
angry beyond words. And between ourselves it isnH nice 
to be in the house with men who drink like that, now 
ts it? Well, the next afternoon, that was Sunday, Paul 
Fairfax went away. He had been invited till Monday, but 
he made some excuse. I knew he felt he wouldn’t go 
through another such evening. I felt sorry for Mrs. Pel- 
letreau; she really looked terribly cut up, but you know — 
I like her awfully, and she’s a good friend of mine — 
but she ought not to have such men as Harry Lingard 
in the house. Harry’s a nice fellow when he’s sober, but 
the trouble is he never is sober.” 

“ Well, we won’t ask Harry Lingard then,” said Leonora, 
pushing the cards and the visiting list together into a 
drawer, and getting up ; “ let’s go to luncheon.” 

“ I never dreamed of your asking Harry Lingard,” said 
Belinda earnestly, as she followed her. “ I was only tell- 
ing you that because I wanted you to see how — how al- 
together — don’t you know — how diiferently Paul Fairfax 
looked at things. And I do want you to ask him.” 

“Not this time, I think,” said Leonora, sitting down 
at the table. “ Those tiresome servants ! They always for- 
get about the curtains. Nolan, draw that curtain. That’s 
better; I don’t fancy a sharp blade of sunlight across my 
eyes. Don’t you hate a glare ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Belinda absently. “ Yes, I sup- 
pose I do. But what I want to say, Leonora ” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


249 


Oh, my dear, don’t want to say anything at luncheon ! 
believe me, it’s the only way to be happy.” 

“ I don’t know what’s the objection to my saying I 
think you are making a great mistake not to invite Paul 
Fairfax — ” This Belinda rather blurted out, acutely con- 
scious that she would be prevented doing it in any other 
way. 

Leonora laughed. “ There’s no objection to your say- 
ing it, if you’ve no objection to my saying I don’t mean 
to.” 

Belinda laid down her knife and fork, though the filet 
was good and she was hungry. “Would you mind telling 
me,” she said, “ why you don’t mean to ? ” 

“ Be tout mon coeur. I don’t know him well enough 
to invite him in this informal way, and I know him just 
well enough not to like to make him feel he’s obliged 
to come whether he wants to come or not.” 

“ Then why doesn’t the same apply to the other men 
you’ve asked ? ” 

Leonora flushed a little. “ Oh,” she said, “ the other 
men you are rather responsible for. I don’t know them 
at all, you see, or only in the very slightest way. But 
Paul Fairfax, I met, as you know, under rather peculiar 
circumstances, and I don’t care to do this.” 

“ Why,” said Belinda eagerly, “ I know him better than 
you do. He stopped, as I told you, twenty-four hours 
longer than you did. I had several talks with him, and 
I may say I know him very well. And if you’re afraid 
he’ll be too much flattered by this invitation, I can assure 
you he is not that kind. At Newport he was run after 
abominably, but though I suppose he liked it, men always 
do, he seemed to keep his head all right. And this winter 
— oh, it’s so funny to be behind the scenes and hear the 
women talk! It’s hard to get him, and the harder it is 
the more they want him. You know there isn’t any man- 
ner of question he’s the man this winter. His fortune’s 
just colossal, they say, and he’s good-looking and well- 
mannered, and you know there isn’t anything better in 
the way of family. And the men like him, and the girls 


250 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


adore him, and the mothers are angling for all they’re worth. 
And he holds back, they say, just to play them all a little! 
He picks and chooses, accepts three or four dinners, goes 
to a couple of balls, and then lays off and rests himself, 
and declines right and left, and you don’t know when he’ll 
start up again and take a hand.” 

“ The young barbarian ! ” said Leonora. He should be 
taught his place ! ” 

“Why, bless you,” exclaimed Belinda, “that’s what I’m 
arguing for. His place is top. You know there isn’t any- 
body that can dispute it with him. Teach him that, con- 
cede him that, by all means.” 

Leonora made a gesture of contempt. 

“ Listen,” said Belinda earnestly, leaning forward on her 
elbows, “ I haven’t any particular reason to like Paul 
Fairfax. He has a pretty cheap opinion of me, and I 
don’t blame him, considering the people I go with gen- 
erally. But he doesn’t know everything, he doesn’t know 
what sort of a life I’ve had to lead. Shall I tell you one 
thing? Up to that morning at Mrs. Pelletreau’s I’d never 
seen any man much above Harry Lingard or Hebberton — 
I’d thought all men were more or less like that. But when 
I saw that Paul Fairfax despised and hated ’em — for though 
he didn’t say a word, he did, I know he did — it gave me 
a different sort of feeling to what I’d ever had.” 

“ I don’t understand,” said Leonora rather low. “ What 
kind of a feeling ? ” 

Belinda drummed on the table with her fingers, and 
her cheeks were flushed. “ Oh, I don’t know,” she said 
under her breath. “ I don’t believe I could make you un- 
derstand. You’ve been with such different people always. 
Your people were too pious, I know, and gave you too 
strict principles, but then I’m sure it’s better than not be- 
lieving in anything and having no principles at all. Un- 
derstand me, I’m not prepared to say you’re any nearer 
right than I am — but what I do say is, there must be a 
point somewhere between your bringing up and mine that 
would be just about the thing!” 

Leonora laughed, rather relieved. At this moment some 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


251 


notes of acceptance, regrets, invitations, etc., were brought 
in, and Paul and his principles were dropped. But when 
they got back to the library and sat down by Leonora’s 
desk to add these new cards to the list, Belinda returned 
to the question of his being invited. 

“ I’ll tell you frankly, Leonora,” she said, “ I feel it’s a 
mistake, it’s missing a chance, not asking him. It would 
mahe the dance, just maJce it. Oh, I know these people. 
He went to the first one of all for Daisy Butterbeans; you 
weren’t there, you told me. Mrs. Butterbeans was so off 
her base about it, it was ludicrous, you know. And Mrs. 
Bichards pelted him with invitations to dinner, to the 
opera, to nobody knows whaty just because he sent Amabel 
some flowers the night of her first ball. How, Amabel’s 
a sweet-looking little thing with yellow hair and a dimple, 
but I don’t believe he’d even looked at her. I happen to 
know why he sent the flowers; it was because her father 
has some kind of an interest in a mine near the Fairfax 
mines and has behaved very well about some matter.” 

Oh, poor fellow, we won’t add to his persecution.” 

“ He is quite able to take care of himself, Leonora. 
I think he showed himself capable of that on the Touraine. 
But it’s in your own interests I’m speaking. You want 
this tiresome dance to be a success. It’s the first thing 
you’ve given, and there’s no reason — kids or no kids — that 

it shouldn’t be. How if you ask Paul Fairfax ” 

“ And if Paul Fairfax refuses ” 

“ He won’t refuse. I give you my word, he won’t. I 
Jcnow he’ll come,” 

Oh, but you can’t know. And I couldn’t support the 
humiliation of having asked in vain ! ” 

“ But if I tell you he will come ” 

It flashed through Leonora’s mind that it was not at 
all impossible that Belinda should yield to the temptation 
of communicating with Paul, stating the case in detail, and 
begging him to come. Therefore, there was an angle to her 
refusal that it had not had before, and Belinda was frankly 
out of humour about it, and the bizarre friendship seemed 
on the eve of dissolution. When they parted, she was so 


252 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


stiff in manner that Leonora relented a bit and was con- 
strained to say: 

“Don’t be angry, Belinda. You know we all have wills 
more or less stubborn. Now, while I can’t give in to 
you about this, I’m quite willing to have cards sent to 
him for the days, if you think best.” 

“ Cards for days ! ” exclaimed Belinda with contempt. 
“Why, days are the dumping-ground of society. Do you 
think anybody is complimented by cards for days at home? 
Heavens ! my dear, you are a social ingenue. I don’t believe 
one man in a hundred even looks at cards that are sent 
him, much less answers them. When he goes to days, he 
goes because some woman he likes has begged him to come 
to hers. Why, in this case Paul would be insulted because 
you had not asked him to something intime', a dinner or a 
small dance, or even an afternoon tea of half a dozen people. 
You may be quite sure he wouldn’t come to your days ! ” 

“ Still, it wouldn’t be doing any harm if he doesn’t 
even look at the cards he gets.” 

“ Do as you please,” said Belinda, with a large-minded 
sweep of the umbrella she held in her hand. “We will 
send the cards, but you will see the result. I’m sorry you 
can’t trust to me. You know more than I do about theology 
and the history of the church, but you’ll find I’m a good 
deal better up than you are on society as you find it in 
New York.” 


CHAPTER IV 


B ELINDA’S predictions were verified. The dance was 
a fair success, and Leonora really enjoyed it herself. 
It added three or four more to her personal follow- 
ing, as that number of older men who had been invited were 
flattered at the discrimination shown and quite disposed to 
evince their appreciation of it. But the next day a morn- 
ing journal gave a great deal of space to the affair, and in 
one of the evening papers there was a picture of Leonora, 
and one of the front of the house. These illustrations were 
repeated in various forms in the next day’s issue, and all 
that had not committed themselves before, and the Sunday 
papers, made great capital of the event, and copied liberally 
from all. Mr. Hungerford sniffed contemptuously and ran 
his eye rather anxiously through the columns of the various 
journals as they came out. But there seemed to be nothing 
that troubled him particularly, and when Leonora, with 
heightened colour, filled with a sensation of outraged self- 
respect, brought him the first of the pictures that appeared, 
he merely said: 

“ Oh, that’s part of the social business ; it’s vulgar, but 
so is almost everything else about it, if you come down 
to that.” 

“ But isn’t there any way of stopping it ? ” she said, 
almost crying. 

“No way but keeping out of sight, I suppose,” he replied 
nonchalantly, knocking the ashes off his cigar. 

“ Then I think nice girls had better keep out of sight,” 
she said hotly. 

He shrugged his shoulders, but made no answer, and went 
on smoking. After a silence of some minutes, Leonora said, 
in rather a low tone, hesitating between the words: 

17 253 


254 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“ Was my mother’s picture ever in a newspaper? ” 

Great heavens, no ! ” he cried, as if the question stung 

him. 

Then I don’t see why mine need be,” she said, after a 
little. 

Her father got up and walked about the room. “ Life’s 
different now,” he said huskily. 

“ Isn’t it only the outside of it that’s different ? ” she 
asked, without looking up. “ I don’t ask — anything — ^but to 
be — to be — as good as she was.” 

^‘Well, you can’t be, in these cursed rotten days!” he 
said between his teeth, and left the room abruptly. 

It was only the second time he had ever spoken of her 
mother to her. 

Later, when Belinda came there was subdued triumph in 
her eyes. “Well, didn’t I tell you we’d make it go?” she 
said. 

“ If it hadn’t been for the newspapers and the pictures,” 
returned Leonora, “ it would have been all right. But, oh, 
what a horror that sort of thing is ! ” 

“ Oh, that’s nothing 1 ” said Belinda soothingly. “ Every- 
body gets used to that. Ho, all this was very moderate and 
quite decent. I think I know the woman that wrote what 
came out this morning.” 

“ And how on earth did she get hold of it ? ” 

“ Why, very likely she was here. You can’t tell. I know 
three or four society women who get quite a handsome in- 
come from reporting. I’ve been asked to do it myself, but 
I don’t go out regularly enough. I haven’t the inside track, 
because of that. You must go all the time if you are to be 
anything of an authority and to get -anything of a standing.” 

“Heavens, Belinda, you speak as if it were one of the 
learned professions ! ” 

“It mayn’t be a learned one, but it’s a lucrative one, 
and a legitimate one.” 

“It may be lucrative, but I don’t think it’s legitimate 
going into people’s houses without their knowing what you 
want and writing a lot of trash about them, and publish- 
ing it.” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


255 


^^But it isn’t without their knowing it generally, and 
they want what you call trash published. It’s supply and 
demand, don’t you see? If society didn’t want to be re- 
ported, there wouldn’t be any social reporters.” 

Belinda felt the subject to be a delicate one, however, 
for a girl of Leonora’s cloistered past, and she rather tried 
to change the current of the talk. “ You’d think,” she said, 
“to read this account, that it was really a big affair, and 
wasn’t just a lot of kids with a few grown-ups to show ’em 
how to dance. I only hope Paul Fairfax won’t read it and 
get on his ear ! ” 

“I don’t know what that is, but I hope he won’t, I’m 
sure, if it wouldn’t make him happy.” 

“ The cards for the days are all out, aren’t they ? ” said 
Belinda thoughtfully. “ I almost wish we’d kept his back 
till you’d had a chance to meet him somewhere at dinner, 
or till I could persuade you, Leonora, persuade you to ask 
him here to dinner! I wish you would listen to reason. 
But I suppose there’s no use in talking about it. If you 
met him you could explain it to him without seeming to, 
you know. Incidentally just to say how bored you’d been 
by the kids, and how you’d dropped them after giving them a 
little dance, and then have got in something about the ridic- 
ulous exaggeration of the account of it in the papers. Then 
you could have sent him a card, and he might have come.” 

The days were very nice, as days go. The house was 
big enough not to be crowded, there was some excellent 
music, but not much of it the first day, one divine soprano 
solo, and a famous ’cellist, and admirable things to eat 
and drink. Leonora had the Hew England college profes- 
sor’s maiden sister in brocaded satin just beside her, and 
a very smart young married woman to receive with her, 
and Belinda and Daisy Butterbeans and Amabel Eichards 
were without their hats. So many men came that Belinda 
was almost unnerved. She ran across to Leonora and 
squeezed her hand and whispered ecstatically that it was a 
walk-over. But Paul Fairfax was not among the men who 
came, alas! 

Three of the four days had passed and had all been 


256 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


equally successful. Leonora was getting in the full swing 
of the winter’s gaiety and she had begun to like it. She 
had health, beauty, great freedom about money, a fine house, 
an assured social position; every woman likes admiration, 
and she had a great deal of it; every woman likes power, 
and she had not a little of it. Just about this time, she 
was really quite happy; quite a young queen in her way; 
and there was a very slight wearing away of prejudices and 
an inclination to see things from other sides than her own. 
She had naturally not been thrown much with the Meadow- 
burn set; there were few of them in the city, and even when 
she had to dine with Mrs. Pelletreau the company had been 
selected with chastened solicitude by the hostess, and not 
the most carping Puritan could have criticised it. Her 
father, moody and preoccupied, had shown no desire to 
have his friends, male or female, at dinner. So all the 
dinners had been made up of persons nearer her own age, 
and those whom she had more or less found sympathetic, 
and she had got much amusement out of the selecting and 
assorting them. The Benthorps had come to town and were 
installed in a grand house. Angelica Perkins was also estab- 
lished for the winter in a pretty apartment, and Sarah was 
coming later on to pay Leonora a visit. It was quite 
amusing to pick up the threads of the summer and work 
them upon the winter’s canvas. Combinations and what 
would result from them were a great amusement to her. 
There was no question that she liked it all. 

It was eight o’clock on a cold evening near the end of 
January, and the streets were “dumb with snow.” Leonora, 
leaning back in the carriage, watched from the window the 
panorama of hustling errand boys with red cheeks and mit- 
tened hands held tight against their ears; the limp drag 
of a workwoman’s skirt along the uncleared pavement, whose 
arms were too tired to lift it out of the snow; the hurry- 
ing clerk whose long day of work was just ended. Beside 
her own carriage were others going on errands similar to 
hers, glittering carriages with two men on the box, or 
hacks with dinner-bedizened people within. And above them 
all was the deep night-blue of the sky sifted with clear- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


257 


cut stars. And around was an atmosphere of still cold 
that made healthy blood tingle as it flowed. How much she 
liked it all! 

She was sorry for the tired seamstress and for the weary 
clerk who had worked all day and who were going home 
to unwarmed and unlighted attics. But her mood was more 
in tune with the young, the happy, the prosperous. For 
once that she thought of the clerk and the seamstress, ten 
times she thought of the people going their way of pleasure ; 
for once that she felt chilled by “ the eager and the nipping 
air” ten times she felt the tingling of her young blood 
that came of it. The cruel cold of the snow beneath her 
was lost in the gleaming of its unapproachable whiteness; 
and in the beauty of the starry mysteries above her, she 
forgot awe of their unfathomableness. 

The carriage stopped at a grand, grand house, ever so 
much grander than her father’s; she smiled to think of 
little Amy Benthorp and her altar cloths being so enshrined. 
“ I wonder how she likes it and what she’ll make of it,” 
she said to herself. They had to wait a moment — there 
was a coupe before them, out of which a young man stepped. 
He went up the winding stairs to the door, and in the 
flood of light, when it opened to receive him, she recog- 
nised Paul Fairfax. 

“ Oh,” she said to herself as she caught her breath, “ he 
comes here, does he ? ” 

It must be said, she had felt it pretty certain that he 
would be here. It was the first time she had seen him 
since she came back to town, so it was not strange that 
the sight, aided by the cold, sent the quick blood to her 
face. The footman humbly opened the carriage door, the 
maid .was officiously occupied in adjusting her mistress’ 
skirts and keeping them ofl the clean-swept stones as she 
alighted and went up the step. It made Leonora a little 
ashamed and impatient to be so obsequiously attended, and 
she thought of the poor bedraggled seamstress struggling 
through the snow and probably at this very moment climbing 
alone the dark and rickety stairs of some ill-smelling tene- 
ment-house. 


258 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


When she entered the drawing-room (there were such a 
number of rooms en suite it was very impressive) she was 
startled to find so many guests. The invitation had been 
informal and recent. Had she been an afterthought? Well, 
she didn’t care, she was glad to have been able to come if 
it helped them out; and even if it didn’t, she was glad! 
It would amuse her to see how they got on in town; there 
was Paul Fairfax — and she would see how they got on with 
him. The Leonora Hungerfords of society do not doubt 
•♦their welcome anywhere, and do not trouble themselves with 
suspicions of their neighbours. 

The young hostess was charming in pale yellow with 
pearls. It was a favourable symptom that the violet fad 
was not maintained. The duenna beside her was so anxious 
between watching her and the guests and the servants that 
she looked in purgatory. Leonora’s figurehead was worth 
two of her. Amy gave Leonora a limp welcome, but her 
father came forward with the first look of pleasure that 
had been on his face since the day began. 

^‘You here!” he said, taking her hand with warmth. 

Why didn’t they tell me you were coming ? ” 

Amy blushed and looked disconcerted and the duenna 
was a pitiable object. 

I am a stop-gap then,” thought Leonora, but she hur- 
ried to put them out of their misery by saying she never 
told her father who was coming, it was much the better 
plan; and then quickly reverted to the summer, and asked 
all sorts of questions about their Connecticut chateau. This 
place being the relaxation and joy of Mr. Benthorp’s life 
while Amy was making her visits and her journeys, 
he was soon talking of it as if there were no one else 
in the room. He had passed part of each weel^ there 
alone. 

Leonora had hardly courage to look around and see 
whether the various groups contained any one she knew. 
It was a big dinner, indeed, and very incongruous ; a couple 
of Wall Street magnates and their wives, and a number 
of promiscuous young people whom Amy seemed to have 
picked up in her autumn wanderings. In a few minutes 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


259 


dinner was announced and Mr. Benthorp turning to Leo- 
nora said: 

‘^Will you come in to dinner?” in a very matter-of-fact 
way. 

“ Papa ! ” murmured Amy in a low but imperious voice, 
while the duenna made signs to him in an agonised man- 
ner. But the master of the house affected not to notice 
them and strode on with Leonora, leaving demoralised 
groups behind. 

“ I’m afraid,” said Leonora uncomfortably, “ that they 
had made .other arrangements for you. Please let me go 
where Amy wants to put me.” 

“ On the contrary,” he said, “ they must sort themselves 
as they can. There is a great deal of nonsense about this 
business of taking your dinner. I hate a mob. Eight or 
ten people at most and the best things that you can give 
them to eat and drink and smoke and a chance for some 
good talk. But I and my little daughter don’t agree and 
every few weeks this sort of thing is sprung upon me.” 

He smiled comfortably, as knowing he had won. Leo- 
nora could see he was emancipated in some way and she 
guessed that the sisterhood cloud had passed away, and that 
Amy had waked up to the pleasures of the world. 

“ Amy’s looking well, isn’t she ? ” he said complacently. 
“ She’s got the society bee in her bonnet now, and it’s 
buzzing for all it’s worth.” 

You must be glad,” said Leonora. “ She looks so happy, 
and she is so pretty.” 

He laughed a satisfied laugh. Oh, she’ll get on after 
she’s had a little more experience,” he said. “ She won’t 
be taught by anything hut experience. However, I’ve re- 
solved not to worry.” 

In the meantime the demoralised groups, thrown into 
chaos by Mr. Benthorp’s arbitrary choice of Leonora, were 
gradually sorting themselves.” The portly old judge’s wife, 
who had been destined for him, had mated with a near- 
sighted Boston dude who was sampling New York society, 
the same in fact to whom Belinda had explained Leonora 
at the debutantes dance a month before. They were neither 


260 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


of them pleased with the exchange, for the Boston dude had 
been promised by Amy to sit by Leonora, and the judge’s 
wife was enraged that she had not been given the place 
of honour. 

It was a good while before Leonora had the hardihood 
to look at all about her. She gave a quick glance at 
last down the glittering and really well-appointed table; on 
one hand Amy had the judge whose wife had sufFered ship- 
wreck in the matter of her place, and on the other Paul 
Fairfax. About half way down the table on the opposite 
side to her she caught sight of Angelica Perkins, who nodded 
to her; and next her, by the cruelty of fate, was the Rev- 
erend Davidge, no longer reverend in his garb. He was 
in faultless evening attire, and whether it was that, or 
something else, he looked so unlike himself that Leonora 
was not sure that it was he. 

Do you see Davidge ? ” said Mr. Benthorp, following 
her glance. 

Is that Mr. Davidge ? ” she asked doubtfully. 

Yes, he’s been back from Europe only a matter of three 
weeks, but he’s accomplished a good deal in that time. He 
has resigned his parish, left the ministry, and bought a seat 
on the Stock Exchange. Isn’t that ground and lofty tum- 
bling?” 

“ Amazing,” said Leonora faintly. 

It rather took me aback at first,” he answered. ‘‘ But 
I’ve had several talks with him and I can see how he 
stands, and I’m not prepared to say he isn’t right. When 
a man gets as much out of touch with his church, in fact, 
with Christianity itself, as he has got, the only honest 
thing is to say so, isn’t it ? ” 

“I suppose so,” said Leonora faintly. She sat with her 
eyes down, and looking rather pale. It gave her a strange 
feeling to think that she was sitting at the table with a 
man who had abandoned his Lord, sold Him perhaps through 
the lust of money, or turned away from His service because 
of the itchings of ambition. 

“He’s a young man of decided ability,” went on Mr. 
Benthorp. “ He will make his mark I feel sure. It would 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


261 


have been a pity for him to have wasted any more time 
trying to patch up what seems to him a worn-out creed. I 
have great sympathy with honest doubt. But I am afraid 
he will meet a good deal of harsh criticism. His parish 
seemed to me composed mainly of two very tiresome stripes 
of churchmanship, what Amy would call the low and lazy 
and the broad and hazy.” 

How does Amy take it ? His leaving his faith, I 
mean.” 

Oh, well,” he said, with a smile, Amy takes it like a 
woman, which means, as you wouldn’t think she’d take it. 
I should have been sure she would have refused to speak to 
him, given orders at the door that he shouldn’t be let in and 
all that sort of thing. But, on the contrary, she thinks it is 
all deeply interesting, talks with him by the hour, pities him, 
remonstrates with him and thinks he’s very badly used when 
anybody criticises him. You see,” he said, waxing confiden- 
tial, “ she’s a little soured on the Eeverend Burton and his 
persecutions. Something went wrong, I don’t know what; 
and she’s been going about a little since the summer, and 
has seen other sides of life. I’m not sorry that she should 
have a little change of diet. She’ll probably get tired of pity- 
ing Davidge in a few months, and turn her attention to some 
other form of religious obnoxiousness. To please my little 
daughter, a man must be persecuted, and persecuted for his 
faith, or for the want of it. How as between Burton and 
Davidge, Davidge has my sympathy. Davidge is a good deal 
of a man, but Burton is a good deal of a donkey. I don’t 
think with either of them; but I’m quite willing that they 
should think as they please. I take them as I find them and 
refrain from criticism.” 

If saying that a man was a donkey wasn’t criticism, what 
was, thought Leonora, but she forbore to answer. At that 
instant Mr. Benthorp’s neighbour, an angular, sharp-faced 
woman, the wife of a Wall Street man whom he had had a 
hand in making rich and dangerous, claimed his attention, 
and Leonora improved the moment to glance at her neigh- 
bour on the other side. She gave an exclamation of surprise. 

“ I was waiting,” said the slow voice of Courtney, “ to 


262 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


see if you would be at the pains to ascertain whom you bad 
for a neighbour.” 

“ But bow amusing that I shouldn’t have seen you before ! 
To tell you the truth, I’ve been a little embarrassed by having 
to sit here.” 

Yes, I saw you had caused quite a serious estrangement 
between father and daughter; we didn’t know how it was 
going, for a while.” 

“Was it as bad as that? I hoped nobody would see.” 

“ Everybody saw and everybody heard ! The pretty little 
girl in yellow and pearls down there doesn’t like to be con- 
trariee^ does she? She is her father’s own daughter. And 
all Wall Street knows he doesn’t like it. But how in the 
world do you happen to be here ? ” 

“ Oh, I saw a good deal of them in the country. They 
have a most lovely place in Connecticut.” 

“Ah, yes, I remember, a chateau with moat and draw- 
bridge and all that.” 

“ The moat and drawbridge are malicious gossip ; but 
it IS a chateau worthy of France. You ought to see it.” 

“ There’s so much to see now in America, what with 
chateaux and forests and preserves, we shouldn’t get away 
to Europe very often if we stayed for all our friends’ house- 
warmings, should we? And I can’t help thinking that there 
isn’t that cachet about a housewarming that there is about 
steady living in a house that’s warmed you and your fore- 
bears for six or eight hundred years. However, tastes differ. 
I suppose our host is satisfied with his brand-new possessions 
if they are fine enough.” 

“Well, they are fine,” said Leonora, glancing down the 
table. “ And Amy is prettier than a picture.” 

“ She is pretty,” said Courtney thoughtfully, looking at 
her. “ And our old friend of the Touraine seems to think 
so, too. Ho you remember him, Paul Fairfax ? ” 

“ Yes, I remember him,” returned Leonora faintly. 

“ One doesn’t often see him,” went on Courtney. “ He 
doesn’t seem to take kindly to civilisation, that is to say, the 
civilisation of dinners and dances. I’m told he goes out of 
town a good deal, somewhere up in Connecticut — Why! 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


263 


This is the solution of it! The Benthorps’ chateau is in 
Connecticut, isn’t it? Why, yes, that explains it! Well, this 
will be a blow to some anxious families, who have never even 
heard of this yellow peril. Pity he couldn’t have married 
some poor girl, though, pretty and well connected, and have 
evened things up a little. I always like that sort of match. 
But there seems a fatality about the way molten money 
always runs together.” 

At this moment Mr. Benthorp got free from his angular 
neighbour, who had sharply turned on the man beyond her 
to contradict one of his statements. He drew a long breath 
and bent forward, seeming ready to join Leonora and Court- 
ney’s conversation. 

“We were talking of Paul Fairfax,” said Courtney, with 
bland assurance. 

“ Ah, yes,” said Mr. Benthorp, leaning toward them and 
turning his back squarely on his sharp-faced neighbour. 
“Yes, Fairfax is a level-headed young fellow. It isn’t often 
that a fortune falls into such good hands. He’s forging 
ahead; it amuses me to see the place he’s making for him- 
self among men twice his age. That’s a thing that’s born 
in a man; whatever you may call it, rising to the surface 
as sure as oil rises on water. If he’d been born a poor man 
he’d have risen all the same, not quite so quick, perhaps, 
but just as certain.” 

“ I suppose,” said Courtney, “ it isn’t always quite as 
peaceful as oil rising on water, is it? Sometimes a little 
more like dynamite rising on air, with a residuum of pul- 
verised rocks scattered around ? For I’ve thought sometimes 
the temperament you speak of doesn’t take kindly to — to — 
being contrarie in any way.” 

His mild eye wandered down the table to Amy in her 
yellow dress with the strings of pearls around her throat. 

“ I don’t think,” said Mr. Benthorp, “ that it would be a 
question of dynamite with Fairfax. More a strong hand 
bearing down on unsteady ones. For most men’s hands are 
unsteady more or less. The best of ’em get panicky once 
in a while, lose their nerve, give in to scares; but the rare 
ones who succeed, never. How I don’t believe young Fair- 


264 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


fax has ever once doubted himself for the seventh part of a 
second. He wouldn’t tolerate the sensation. It wouldn’t 
come to him, in fact. He isn’t aggressive — he’s sure. That’s 
all.” 

Well,” said Courtney with a soft laugh, “ I don’t think 
I’d like to live in the house with him, if he’s that sort. I 
think a trifle of good-natured giving-in goes a long way 
toward comfort in every-day life, don’t you ? ” 

“ Oh, I wasn’t thinking of every-day life,” said Mr. Ben- 
thorp. “ I was thinking of the bull-ring of business, where 
the matador has got to hold wild beasts in check with his 
eye and to control them by being in possession of him- 
self.” 

“ Ah, yes, I suppose it is different muscles that are brought 
into play in private life.” 

“ Decidedly. Why, the young fellow in question is quiet, 
almost shy, when he’s here at the house — we see a good deal 
of him — and in Wall Street, he is — well, he’s quite my age 
and all my equal.” 

This talk had not lacked interest for Leonora ; in fact, it 
had possessed a little too much. She found herself not lis- 
tening when, as was soon the case, they dropped Paul out of 
the conversation. 

So Paul Fairfax came to this house often; was he at- 
tracted by that crude, pettish girl in the yellow gown, or was 
he drawn only by companionship with her father, this master 
of finance, this prince of self-made men?. It was that, per- 
haps — she tried to believe it was that. It was inconceivable, 
the first. Amy and her whims and her wilfulness wouldn’t 
appeal to him, she knew they wouldn’t. Prettiness would be 
nothing to him. That unlucky picnic ! If Amy ever got him 
to give her a thought, it would be because of her (Leonora’s) 
own doing. How angry he was that day, how bitter he had 
proved, how unforgiving ! It had not moved her at first, she 
had fancied that she could easily whistle him back; but he 
had not given her the chance. It certainly did seem a sort 
of fatality, eoming on the heels of the Touraine business. 

, Well, that time wasn’t her fault, he ought to be just enough 
to see that. Indeed he had seen it, for at Meadowbum he had 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


265 


been so nice. And when they first met in Connecticut he was 
— well — ^he was nice then, too — And that drive! She 
thought she could feel the summer wind in her face now, and 
see the wide green valleys; it was the pleasantest drive she 
had ever taken. They had seemed to be getting really 
friends. If she hadn’t made that silly mistake, refusing to 
drive back with him ! Why did she do it ? Well, she knew in 
her heart why she did it. It was all very well to say it was 
because she wanted to let Amy have some relief from that 
tiresome wagonette and to make it pleasanter for the others, 
particularly Edward, but it wasn’t all duty, oh, no. She 
knew in her heart that it was because — because — yes ! because 
she wanted to try her power over him, to put him back a little 
— because the drive in the morning had been just what it was, 
that she was afraid. It was too soon. It frightened her. It 
was too new. The next time she saw him she should know 
better what it all meant, this tumult in her feelings. How 
easy it is to make mistakes — how hard it is sometimes to 
mend them! 

But if Paul Fairfax had a good deal to resent she had 
something, too, she knew that. Though in truth she did not 
dwell on that. She had but one thought, and that thought 
was to know whether it was true that he liked Amy, and 
whether it was true that his resentment toward her, Leo- 
nora, was justified by anything she had done. Nobody could 
tell her that but he himself. Judging from the past it was 
not likely that he was going to tell her. But, at any rate, 
she could perhaps guess from his manner whether he was 
angry or indifferent or preoccupied. She would not take it 
into account at all that he was not coming up to speak to 
her after they had left the table. 

The slow dinner dragged out its tortuous length ; it 
seemed to her a nightmare of unnecessary nourishment, a 
bad dream of uncalled-for courses. Courtney had mur- 
mured to her in a low tone, What vulgar profusion,” and 
Mr. Benthorp had waved the servants away in disdain several 
successive times when they approached him. 

He looked impatient and ceased to talk with interest. At 
last, when it was evident the end had come, he rose quickly 


266 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


and said, “I think everybody must feel as glad as if the 
noon bell had rung for recess and school was out ! ” 

Poor Leonora ! She didn’t seem in luck. Whatever way 
the kaleidoscope turned, it never seemed to throw that glit- 
tering piece of crystal she wanted next to her. Angelica 
had seized upon her in the drawing-room before the men 
came out, and did not release her when they entered. Amy 
brought up the Boston dude and presented him, but Leonora 
would have none of him. Courtney sauntered over to her 
as if he had resolved not to besmirch his exclusiveness with 
talking to any one else in the place. Davidge never even 
looked her way. Fairfax was not to be seen. Had he gone 
away ? 

Oh, misery ! her heart swelled, she felt like a disappointed 
child. A clock near her struck the hour; her carriage must 
have been waiting a long time. She had not anticipated such 
a protracted function as this. She happened to be standing 
near the door. Some music was to be added to the lavish 
feast, the accompanist of a costly tenor struck the first notes 
on the piano. A sudden resolution seized her ; she could not, 
would not, stay through that. Before the buzz of voices had 
ceased in obedience to the piano, she whispered good-night 
to Courtney and slipped away. Her maid was waiting for 
her in the dressing-room. 

When she was ready, carriage-boots and all, she went 
drearily out of the door. Exactly opposite it, coming up 
the stairs, was Paul Fairfax. She stood by the head of the 
balusters to let him pass. When he reached her he bowed. 
She put out her hand; her voice was a shade unsteady as 
she said: 

“ I haven’t seen you all winter. Have you been in town ? ” 

He answered her that he had, except for going up to 
Connecticut for a couple of days every week. And Miss 
Fairfax was better? Yes. And the invaluable Miss Borda 
was always with her? And had he ever seen the Warrens 
when he was there, and was there more mud or more snow, 
and how did it look in winter? and many such unmeaning 
questions. 

But this was not what she had been resolving all through 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


267 


dinner to say. Why is it that the things we resolve to say 
are always so hard to get said ? The words she had meant to 
say, never, alas! were said. But in their place came some 
others, much less wise, almost indiscreet, and quite irrele- 
vant. As she went down the stairs, she half turned her 
head, but she did not look at him as she said: 

“I hadn’t expected to have to remind you that we sent 
you cards for some days, and that next Thursday is the last 
of them.” 

When she was in the carriage she was ready to cry. WTiat 
a rudeness, what a childishness she had been guilty of 1 Amy 
herself couldn’t have said a more pettish, more childish 
thing. Driving back through the muffled streets she re- 
called the mood in which she had gone to this sorry feast 
and she characterised it as pitifully childish. Amy herself 
could not have outdone it. 

Nevertheless, she kept unconsciously thinking about 
Thursday, all the days that intervened, and wondering 
vaguely if he would come. It seemed the only thing that 
could restore her self-respect. He did not come. But the 
last post that evening brought a little note from him, say- 
ing he had intended going that afternoon, but had been 
obliged instead to go to Comberford as he had been tele- 
graphed that his aunt was not so well; he trusted, however, 
on some other day to be allowed, etc., etc. That was better 
than nothing. It was something that he had not forgotten. 


CHAPTER V 


T he next morning was bright and cold; Leonora had 
meant to go out early to Mass, but she had overslept. 
That was not to be wondered at, as after the re- 
ception she had gone to a theater party and late supper and 
was very tired. But she had had her bath and was dressed, 
and came out into her pretty sitting-room feeling very fresh 
and rested, and rang the bell for her breakfast to be brought. 
The sun was coming in at the windows, the fire was crack- 
ling on the hearth, a white Angora cat got up and stretched 
herself as Leonora came into the room. The room was very 
pretty; she had put a great deal of thought into its adorn- 
ment. Only the other day some of the last pictures had 
been hung. It is impossible to have a really perfect room 
without time. There were one or two bits of furniture that 
had not come yet, though ordered early in the autumn. She 
quite longed to see the effect when they should be placed. 

She looked on her table; no mail. Her father had sur- 
prised her by one of his sudden fiights to the West about ten 
days ago. She had not taken it so tragically as the first one, 
before Thanksgiving. For one thing, there was too much 
going on to have leisure to worry about it as she did then, 
and for another, she had resolved she would not take it to 
heart that she could not enter into his life at all, and that 
she would make the best out of what she had to enjoy, which 
certainly was a great deal. 

“A great deal!” she repeated to herself, as she put a 
lump of sugar in the cage of the bird in the window, who 
twittered gratefully. She looked out; the sky was gloriously 
blue, the sun was radiantly bright, but the people in the 
street looked cold. And see! there was George, the second 
man, running across to the news-stand in the side street 

268 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


269 


in his shirt-sleeves as if something carried him beyond feel- 
ing the cold, and returning with his arms full of papers. 
That was the first discord of the day. Why did they not 
bring her breakfast? She rang again. The servants were 
growing idle ; they had not enough to do when her father was 
away. It was ten o’clock, and they were reading newspapers 
and her breakfast was not brought up. She had noticed that 
her maid had a flurried sort of look when she last came into 
the room. What was the matter ? Surely they had not been 
having a ball like the wretches of last June! 

Presently there was a clatter of china ; George had carried 
the tray to the door, and the maid brought it in. Certainly 
the maid was flurried, certainly George was, too. Several 
things were found lacking; he had to go down -twice for 
them. Leonora didn’t like the atmosphere. She sat down at 
the table and poured out her coffee. Her eyes fell on the 
morning paper, which bore evidences of having been opened 
and refolded and was much creased. She quietly called the 
maid’s attention to this, and said she did not wish it to 
occur again. At this the woman blushed scarlet and with- 
drew to the door, where she stood irresolute till Leonora told 
her she might go. When they were gone she regained her 
composure, dismissing the subject with the resolution to look 
into matters if there were any more flurried looks and 
creased papers. Presently she finished her coffee and took 
up the paper, opening it idly, more interested in the creas- 
ing and soiling of its pages than in their printed contents. 

“ Fancy their presuming to do it,” she said to herself, 
shaking it out with a dainty hand, convinced it smelled of 
the breakfast bacon and tobacco-smoke of the servants’ hall. 

As she dropped it in her lap two pictures and something 
in large type at the top of the first page caught her eye. She 
started, held her breath, leaned forward and read the head- 
lines once, twice, and sat silent as if stunned. At last she 
put her hand before her eyes and leaned her head down on 
the table. 

What does it mean? ” she said below her breath. “ What 
does it mean ? Oh, it can’t, it can’t be true 1 I will not be- 
lieve it ! ” 

18 


270 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


A low burst of sobs came; she put her face down on her 
arms and shook from head to foot. 

“ Oh, father, how could you — ^how could you ! ” 

She felt so alone, so friendless, pity for herself came first, 
as was natural, and another instinctive feeling was resent- 
ment of the breaking of a tie of nature. Her father had 
been cold, had offered many provocations; but he was still 
her father; she was nearer to him than any one else was, she 
had a right to his protection, she had a claim on his affection. 

After a long time she lifted her head and rose to her 
feet. “ It can’t be true,” she said under her breath, and 
looked dumbly about for the paper. It had fallen to the 
floor. She stooped and picked it up; the effort made her 
giddy and she sat down on the nearest chair. After a min- 
ute she looked at the first page and read it steadily. She 
turned down the pictures at the top and did not look at them. 
The telegraphic despatch was what she was trying to master. 
It was brief and to this effect; 

“ On Tuesday, at 10 a.m., at Sioux F alls, Dakota, a di- 
vorce was granted to Mrs. Cecilia Harding and the decree 
signed. At twelve o’clock a civil marriage was performed 
between her and Oscar Hungerford, Esq., of New York, be- 
fore Judge Amberman, who had granted the decree.” 

Below that came the picture of a woman, rather pretty, 
and then one of Mr. Hungerford. The text went on to say, 
in more or less shrouded terms, that no surprise would be 
excited by this announcement, as society was familiar with 
the steps that had led up to it. Mrs. Harding had left her 
husband a year ago, and had been living more or less openly 
under the protection of Mr. Hungerford ever since. In 
September she had gone to Dakota to establish a residence 
there. Mr. Hungerford had twice been with her for several 
weeks at Sioux Falls; he had been at home for something 
like a month when he was telegraphed by the lawyers the 
date the decree would be rendered, and had arrived in time 
to have the marriage take place at once. Mrs. Harding had 
made many friends during her stay in Sioux Falls, and she 
had been overwhelmed with attentions and congratulations. 
Mr. Harding, the husband, had made no defence in the suit. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


271 


which was brought on the ground of incompatibility of tem- 
per. No details were obtainable at the office of Judge Am- 
berman. 

“ The public is to be congratulated,” continued the pa- 
per, on the decorum with which such matters are arranged 
now ; a great contrast to the methods which prevailed only a 
few years ago, when nothing was withheld from the press.” 

Leonora read this slowly two or three times, then turned 
the paper with a certain reluctance and looked at the two 
faces it presented ; a dark flush mounted to her forehead and 
her eyes glowed. 

Presently a knock faintly sounded on the door; it was 
the maid, who in trembling curiosity presented a telegram. 
Leonora took it silently and dismissed her. 

The telegram was from her father. It announced his 
marriage, and the fact that he and his wife expected to 
arrive at home the next evening at seven o’clock, and the 
added counsel, ^^Be at home to receive us; have everything 
ready.” 

Leonora started to her feet. A sharp cry, quite audible, 
burst from her lips. ^^Here! he is going to bring her here 
to this house ! ” 

Well, and what of it? If he had married her, he was 
naturally expecting to bring her to his house sooner or later. 
But Leonora had, up to this, only been knocking at the outer 
gate of her trial; she had only got so far as to realise her 
father’s treason to her, his insult to her mother’s memory. 
This short despatch had the effect of a search-light suddenly 
turned upon her future. 

Where am I to go ? What am I to do ? How can I es- 
cape them ? ” 

It did not take long to decide these questions. She stood 
for about the space of two minutes motionless, then started 
to the bell and rang it sharply. 

“ Have my trunks brought down at once,” she said, and 
without the pause of a moment she began to assort the books 
and papers lying on the table near her. From them she 
turned to the dressing-room, and before the men had brought 
down the trunks she had emptied a couple of wardrobes and 


272 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


had set the maid at work in folding dresses and assorting out 
the ones needed for the present from those to be stored away. 
Her brain seemed to work very rapidly. There was not a 
moment of indecision when the two women came to her for 
instructions as to where this or that was to be put. While 
they packed the boxes she sat down at her desk and tore up 
papers and made bundles of letters, and assorted into boxes 
the writing things she wanted and those that were useless to 
her. Cards and note-paper marked with her address she 
threw swiftly into an open drawer to be left. All the invi- 
tations not yet attended to she tumbled into another, and the 
visiting-books went with them. All this packing and assort- 
ing, and the steady and hurried work of collecting her be- 
longings from all quarters of the house occupied nearly three 
hours. Several times her maid had humbly asked if she 
should not bring her some luncheon, but she had scarcely re- 
sponded, so busy was her brain with its one train of thought. 
At last the girl went down and brought up a tray of lunch- 
eon, and set it where Leonora could see it. 

“Won’t you take it, miss?” she asked timidly after 
a while. It must be said she and the chambermaid were 
rather hungry themselves, but she did feel sorry for her 
young mistress. Leonora started. 

“ Oh,” she said, “ yes, you can both go down, but do not 
he long.” Then she tried to eat something, but her throat 
seemed to contract when food approached it; she forced her- 
self to swallow a cup of bouillon, then got up and walked 
about the dismantled rooms. 

The pictures, the books, the plants in the sunshine, the 
bird in its cage, the cat before the fire; this had been her 
home, a place where she could shut herself in and escape 
the world when it wearied her, a place that she could call 
hers, a pied-d-terre. Heavens, how great the big round earth 
was, how tiny the spot on which she could set her foot and 
say it was hers! But when she hadn’t even that; when no 
smallest atom of the big round earth belonged to her 

It was a thought bewildering in its suddenness, its size. 
She was going to take a momentous step, something that 
there would not be any chance to reconsider. Had she 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


273 


considered? One doesn’t consider when one springs over- 
board into the merciless sea to escape the merciless flames 
of a burning ship. The sea was better than the flames, 
human nature told her that. But with a quick, piercing 
pang, she thought, human nature didn’t always tell one 
right, did it ? Her hand trembled, the first indecision 
marked her movements. She took up and reread and laid 
down a despatch she had written, and opened and glanced 
again through a very brief letter she had scrawled in expla- 
nation of the despatch when she first began to pack. 

What shall I do ? ” she said, putting her hands to her 
temples. “ To finish all this, and to put the house in decent 
shape to leave, and to give the servants their orders, and to 
get away at twelve o’clock to-morrow morning will take 
every minute. I can’t possibly go down there.” A sharp 
sort of irritability came into her face and manner. It’s 
impossible,” she said to herself, resuming her work. “ It’s 
one of those things I’d rather have done, but it’s too late. 
I didn’t think of it before. It isn’t my fault that I didn’t. 
I’ve had enough to think of. Heaven knows.” 

And she pulled a package of labels toward her and began 
to write addresses with a shaking hand. Everything went 
wrong — the ink seemed to have grown turgid, the pens, one 
after another, that she tried, made illegible thick marks or 
slid over the paper without making any mark at all. She 
threw them petulantly as they failed her into the waste- 
paper basket or into the fire with something of the same 
spirit that made Balaam belabour the ass. After a while 
she pushed back her chair and got up and walked about the 
room. 

God knows I want to do right. And I think it is right. 
One can only do what one thinks is right.” 

But some thought was working in her mind that she 
could not get rid of by fair means or by foul. She stood 
and gazed out of the window, but it did not distract her 
from her troubled questionings to count the carriages that 
rolled by; nor did it help matters to take the cat in her 
arms and fondle her. No, nothing would relieve her of the 
insistent doubt that had darted into her mind a half-hour 


274 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


before. She heard the servants coming up the stairs from 
their much-belated meal. “ It is no use,’’ she thought, “ I 
shan’t be satisfied till I’ve done it,” and she went into her 
dressing-room to get ready to go out. 

She dressed herself hurriedly, gave the maids some 
orders, and taking the telegram and the letter in her hand 
went down the stairs. The sky had clouded over early in 
the afternoon, and by this time there was the gloom of the 
winter night at hand. When she got into the street she felt 
giddy and a little faint; and being unused to going out 
alone, the already gathering twilight made her feel afraid. 

But I must get used to all this,” she said to herself. 

It is going to be my life.” She put the telegram and let- 
ter into her pocket and hurried forward, pulling her veil 
close over her face. People jostled her in the street, car- 
riages did not wait for her to pass at the comers, but rolled 
on with a magnificent indifference to pedestrian convenience 
such as undoubtedly her own carriage had had the habit of 
showing. But it made her angry and bitter, besides making 
her afraid. The way seemed long to her, though it was not. 
She was glad when she saw the street-lamps already ablaze 
before the great church. 

The church itself was dark but for the little red lamp 
before the tabernacle, and one or two lights by the confes- 
sionals nearest the door. In the neighbourhood of these sev- 
eral persons were kneeling. Leonora knelt down and waited 
her turn. It was the confessional before which she had 
waited the Saturday afternoon in June when she came back 
from Meadowbum. Since then she had always gone there 
once a week, on Friday or on Saturday, knowing she was 
sure of finding the same father. His name was over his con- 
fessional. And she knew that, but his face she had never 
seen. In all the scores of confessions that he heard weekly 
she wondered how he could remember hers, but he always 
seemed to recognise her voice, to know what to say, and had 
more than once referred to some advice he had given her the 
week before. 

This time she had not long to wait, though she was the 
last, and there was no one to come after her. She was so 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


275 


agitated for a moment or two after she knelt before the little 
grating that she could not speak. The priest said some re- 
assuring word to her, and at last in a broken voice she made 
an attempt to make her confession in the regular way, sins 
against God, against her neighbour, against herself; and 
then she broke down and began almost incoherently to tell 
her story. 

I don’t know what sin I mayn’t have committed to-day,” 
she said. “ I am frightened when I think of it. I believe 
I wish this woman — this woman that has taken my mother’s 
place — were dead. I believe I wish her every evil — I know 
I pray that I may never have to see her face nor hear her 
voice — I wish that I may go so far away that I may never 
have news of her — of him. If this is a sin, my Father, I 
have sinned, I am sinning.” 

“1 don’t understand the circumstances,” said the priest 
slowly ; explain them to me. Something has come to your 
knowledge about — about your father’s life ? ” 

“ To-day, not six hours ago, I saw in the paper that my 
father had married this woman — they call it married, I sup- 
pose — she had just got a divorce in Dakota — ^her husband 
didn’t make any opposition — it was — about my father — I 

can’t explain — but you know what I mean ” 

“ Yes, I know. Go on.” 

And I had never had a suspicion — I had never known 
a thing about it, and all the world had known — everybody — 
even my best friends. I see now what certain things meant, 
and I was the only one who didn’t know what my own 
father’s life was, and what he would probably do. If he 
had only told me, written me a line after he went away ten 
days ago, prepared me a little, and not let me see it first 
in the paper.” 

Yes, that was hard, it was very hard; hadn’t he written 
to you at all?” 

. Ho, not a line; not a word of explanation, nothing to 
make it easier — to make me feel it less and try to excuse 
him.” 

“ Then perhaps there is a chance that it is not true, that 
it’s only newspaper gossip, isn’t there ? ” 


276 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“ Oh, no ; for a little while after I’d seen it in the paper 
there came a despatch, a dozen words or so, telling me they 
would be home to-morrow, and telling me to be there to 
receive them, to have everything ready for them.” 

Tut, tut, that is hard lines,” said the priest below his 
breath. 

“ And fancy what I have had to do, packing my trunks, 
arranging everything to leave; it’s the only home I ever 
had except the convent, and I’d grown to care for it a good 
deal — and never to come back, never, never while I live, I 
hope.” 

“You are going away?” 

“ Oh, yes ; how could I stay ? ” 

“ You are going to some of your family? ” 

“No, I haven’t a relation in the world. I am an only 
child — my mother was — and my father is the last of his 
family. When I think I am all of his blood there is, and to 
abandon me for — for ” 

»“IIe has not told you to leave the house?” 

“ Oh, no. It is the last thing he would think of. He 
will be very angry, he will never forgive it.” 

“ But where are you going ? ” 

“ I have some friends in Connecticut. I am going to 
telegraph to them to-night when I find out about the trains. 
They would do anything for me. I could stop with them 
till I had made my plans, or for a longer time perhaps, if it 
were necessary, and later I could go to the convent.” 

“You have money of your own?” 

“ N — ^no. But my father has been very liberal with me 
about all that.” 

“But he wouldn’t continue to be so, would he, if you 
left him in this way ? ” 

“ Perhaps not.” 

“You are not of age, are you?” 

“ No, not exactly. I shall not be twenty-one till the 
summer after next.” 

And so you are, by the law of the land and by the law 
of the Church, in subjection to your father, are you not ? ” 

“You can’t mean — ^you can’t really mean I have got 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


277 


to stay and meet that woman — speak to her — look at 
her?” 

Leonora^s voice was one of keenest distress, and it pained 
the ear of the priest set there to deal out counsel whether 
it hurt or healed. 

Listen, my child,” he said gently. “ I know you well 
enough to be sure you want to do right. You want to do 
God’s will if you see it plain before you. Now, your Cate- 
chism will tell you what your duty is in this difficult case, 
for it is a difficult case, and I am very sorry for you. The 
moral law by which you and I are hound, the command- 
ments, contain two among the others which bear on this 
case. The law condemning marital infidelity is no stronger 
than the law condemning revolt against parental author- 
ity. Unhappily the law of the land sanctions the breach 
of the first law; but with that I have nothing to do. 
I am here to expound the law of the Church. And there 
is nothing that she sustains more firmly than parental au- 
thority. She never remits it, except where the parent uses 
his authority to force a child into sin. Your father, more’s 
the pity, probably does not know he is in sin. The law of 
his country protects him in the unholy contract he has 
made. He is not a Catholic, you have told me. He is not 
a Christian even, for you said he has not been baptised. 
He would never understand your scruples, and would prob- 
ably put down your attitude to self-will and jealousy and 
pique. But this is neither here nor there. The Church 
says submit yourself to your parents. That is the road in 
which you ought to walk. Ho not blame me for having 
to tell you the bald truth.” 

“I cannot do this,” said Leonora under her breath. 

You do not know what you ask.” 

''I do. know what I ask,” he answered. '‘I ask a 
hard thing, but it is the hard things we do that count in 
our salvation. Ho this, and, believe me, you will not be 
sorry. It is not necessary for you to look ahead. Take 
each day as it comes. Your father has sent you the injunc- 
tion : ^ Be there to receive us to-morrow.’ That is the word 
for the day, for to-morrow. Hon’t look into the future. 


278 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


‘ Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ Sufficient, but 
not intolerable. If you drag into one day the burdens of 
to-morrow and the day after it, you will fall down under 
your load. God never promised you strength to bear all 
that; you will have to bear it alone if you are bent on 
grappling single-handed with the present and the future 
and what’s left of the past.” 

But if you only knew,” murmured Leonora through her 
tears. 

“ I do know,” he said. I know you will need super- 
human strength. I know, too, you will get it. Don’t mis- 
take me. I have asked a hard thing of you, but I have asked 
it knowing that you — and God — are equal to it. Just put 
it out of your mind how you are going to act; what you 
are going to say on this or that occasion. It will all be 
different to what you think. Just make a great big act of 
confidence in God, and you will see it will all be right.” 

“ But if I have these awful feelings about her again, that 
I hate her enough to kill her, that I want everything bad 
to happen to her ” 

“ Think of her in her last agony (for she will be in her 
last agony some day sooner or later) and you won’t hate 
her. You’ll pray for her, and gradually get to be sorry for 
her. A person living in mortal sin — how could you be any- 
thing but sorry and afraid when you thought about her ? ” 

“ But if I did feel the way I’ve been feeling — if I couldn’t 

help feeling so — I couldn’t go to Holy Communion ” 

Why, that would be a pretty way to treat a temptation ! 
Distinguish between your will and your paltry feelings that 
aren’t worth a wisp of straw. You must will to forgive and 
pity her and do her good if you can. Till you stop willing 
that, go to Holy Communion, keep on with your religious 
duties, and don’t let the devil make you afraid.” 

“ Oh, but you don’t know how bitter, how hard every bit 
of me is, how since this morning I seem turned into some- 
body that I don’t know.” 

“Yes, I understand all about it. I think the time has come 
when you are to be tried ; we get so used to words that their 
meaning slips our minds. A trial, a trying of you to see 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


279 


what you’re made of, and whether you can stand the fire. 
If you can’t, I shall be disappointed in you. I think you 
can, and that God has good designs for you. Have courage, 
have patience. All will come right.” 

“ But, oh, you don’t know what it will be to me — to 
think about my mother — and to see her in her place. To 
know I am to be nothing to my father, and that she is every- 
thing. That I am to be nothing in the house, and that she 
will change all that I have tried, really tried, to do well and 
for the best. All these are little things, I know, but they 
will hurt! And her friends — the people that she will have 
about her — ^how can I see them! How can I speak to 
them ! ” 

“Listen, my child. I told you not to look ahead, not 
to speculate about any more of the future than you can see 
on the face of the clock. But this I do believe, that the 
thing will arrange itself, that your trial will not be long. 
It is hardly possible that your father will desire to have you 
remain in his house; it will not add to his comfort, nor to 
the pleasure of the woman he is bringing into it. The sight 
of you will be a continual reproach to him, a source of jeal- 
ousy to her. What I desire for you is that you may sooner 
or later leave your father’s house with his sanction, with- 
out a quarrel, without a scandal; that you retain his re- 
spect because of your submission to him and your forbear- 
ance toward her, and that you leave the way open to your 
reunion with him by-and-by,when ‘this tyranny is overpast’; 
this tyranny of lust. About the people whom you may 
have to meet, that is a very diflS.cult question. I am confi- 
dent that they will not contaminate you; and I am pretty 
sure that they will not be attracted by you. They will be 
more likely to want you out of the way. Make no protests, 
no reproaches. Silence is all that is asked of you. If the 
woman attempts to make a stalking-horse of you, to get 
received herself into society under cover of you, let me 
know at once. That cannot be allowed. But I don’t think 
it will work that way; I fancy they will not attempt to go 
against the moral sentiment of society, but will bide their 
time and work their way back little by little. I want you 


280 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


to make a strong effort not to be seen in public with her. 
As far as you can manage it, withdraw from society. Lent 
is not far off. Use all your diplomacy to avoid going about 
with her. I think you can do this without offence. But if 
things go differently, and you are in perplexity, come to 
me immediately.” 

“ I will try to do all you want me to,” said Leonora with 
a weary sigh, “ but I don’t feel much courage. I have such 
a quick temper, and haven’t any humility — none at all. You 
will have to pray for me a great deal, my Father, for you’ve 
set me a hard task, and it all looks very black before me.” 

I know I have set you a hard task, and I shall pray 
for you. I shall say my Mass for you to-morrow morning. 
Understand me: I don’t underrate your difficulties; they are 
quite exceptional ; but I believe you will prove yourself equal 
to them. Don’t damage your father’s soul by any misstep. 
God alone knows what you may do for him, just by your 
sufferings offered up for him, just by your silence, only 
broken by your prayers about him. And that poor woman, 
living in her sin before your eyes — don’t fail her.” 

“ I am sorry,” said Leonora slowly, “ I am sorry — ^but 
I know I don’t feel right about her. I do not pity her. I 
can’t make myself pity her; I know I ought to tell you. I 
love my father in a certain sort of way. It would hurt me 
to feel anything bad was going to happen to him, though 
I resent his treatment of me very strongly. I suppose it is 
nature makes me feel that way about him. But about her 
I just feel hard and cruel. I don’t want ever to see or hear 
of her. I should like to put her out of my mind altogether, 
and have done with it.” 

^‘But that you can’t do, you see. God, has permitted 
her to come into your life, and to be a powerful factor in 
it, too. I am sure you could not tell me that if at this 
moment, by lifting your hand, you could sentence her to a 
terrible instant death, you would do it; or that you would 
walk into the next room and drop poison into the glass of 
water that she would be sure to drink in half an hour? Ex- 
actly. You wouldn’t do either of these things. You 
wouldn’t really do any smallest thing to injure her. You 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


281 


simply find your mind crowded with vindictive feelings, 
which you have not invited to come, but which have come 
all the same. You would be glad to get rid of them, no 
doubt, but they won’t go at once when you tell them to. 
They can’t make you sin unless you extend them a welcome. 
They are there without any connivance of yours. Bear their 
presence as you’d bear a physical pain or a temporal mis- 
fortune. Offer the misery they cause you to God, and ask 
relief from it. They are simply feelings. I know your will 
is all right. You do not mean to do anything to injure 
her, do you? ^To, of course I know you don’t mean to. 
Forbid yourself to say a word against her to any one, not 
even to your nearest friend, unless it is necessary in ex- 
planation of your staying, and then as little as possible. 
Take care of the words and the acts; they are all that con- 
cern you at present. The feelings will take care of them- 
selves. They will soon get starved out. Go to communion 
as usual. Now, make a good act of contrition, and I will 
give you absolution.” 

It was very dark when she got out into the street. But 
she was less afraid than she had been when she came, and 
steadier in nerve. The people jostled against her and the 
horses seemed going to trample her under foot, just as they 
did before ; but it did not shock and irritate her senses as it 
did then. She felt very tired, that was all, but in every 
way calmer. 

When she got near the house she saw a man walking 
slowly past it. He looked up at it, and turned and walked 
back again. It rather startled her. Was there some new 
and horrid news to come on top of the news that had come 
already? She drew back a little into the shadow and waited 
till he should have passed her. But before he got to where 
she stood he turned and walked back again, always slowly. 
There were several people passing just at the moment. She 
had not seen his face; she felt agitated, though, to know 
some one was watching the house. She hurried forward, 
under cover of the group before her without looking to the 
right or the left. When she reached the house she went 
quickly up the steps, and, pulling the bell, stood panting 


282 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


in the shadow of the vestibule, with her face toward the 
door. A step came up behind her ; her heart beat furiously ; 
without turning her face she touched the bell again quickly. 
Some one spoke to her just as the door opened and let out 
a flood of light. 

“ Oh ! ” she said in a tone of relief, as she recognised 
Paul Fairfax. ‘‘ I’ve never been out alone after dark before 
in the city, and I was frightened.” 

“ Hay I come in for a few moments ? ” he said. I’ve 
been waiting for you; the servant told me that you had 
gone out,” and they went in together. In one of the smaller 
rooms, which was furnished in colonial style, there was a 
fire burning on a broad hearth, sending out quite a glow, 
which was the only light. 

“ It is cold,” she said, dropping her muff on a chair and 
holding her hands out to the fire. Probably the firelight 
shining up on her face from below gave it even a more 
haggard look than it really had; however that was, the 
sight of it helped Paul to a directness of speech that was, 
he found, easier than more civilised roundabout ways. 

‘^I was out of town this morning and did not get the 
papers till very late,” he said. “ I took the first train back. 
I thought — perhaps — I thought — if I could be of any use 
to you, you would tell me so; you have been a good deal in 
society, but I don’t know what friends you have about you; 
you haven’t lived here very long.” 

“ I haven’t any friends,” said Leonora, spreading her 
hands out with a dreary sort of gesture. “ Only acquaint- 
ances. Kobody has been near me to-day. I have felt so 
alone — so alone — ” Then, after a pause, she went on : All 
this came on me with such a shock — my father had not 
written to me — I read it in the papers. And everybody 
must have known about it long before — I see from things I 
remember now that they must have known. . . . And I — I 
was the only one that hadn’t a suspicion of what was com- 
ing — I — to whom it was a matter of life and death — whom it 
concerned more than any one else in the world ” 

And then a long pause. The fire crackled ; a great lump 
of coal broke and sent out generous light and heat. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


283 


^‘And — and — what are you going to do?” Paul said at 
last, rather unsteadily. 

“ I am going to stay here, just here — ” she returned in 
a smothered voice, with her eyes fixed on the fire. “ And 
they are coming home to-morrow night. I have got to be 
ready to receive them — my father telegraphed me that I 
must — and I have got to do as he says — to see her — to 
speak to her ” 

But you shall not,” he said hotly. “ It would be an 
outrage.” 

“ That is the way I thought at first,” she answered slow- 
ly. “ I suppose I really didn’t stop to think, I just felt — 
I just felt — I must get away, go anywhere, do anything, not 
to meet them ” 

Then what made you change your mind ? ” he demanded 
when she paused. 

“ Oh, it’s a long story,” she said in a weary voice. “ I’m 
so tired — I must sit down.” She turned, and, pushing her 
muff away, sank down on the high-backed chair on which 
she had dropped it. The muff rolled off on the floor, but 
Paul did not pursue it, probably did not even see it. All 
his powers of seeing were concentrated on Leonora’s white 
face. It was two or three minutes before she recovered her- 
self enough to speak. 

^^I have walked fast,” she said, with a sort of gasp be- 
tween the sentences. “ And it frightened me to be out in 
the dark. It’s the first time I’ve ever been out alone. I 
don’t suppose there’s anything to be afraid of; but I was 
nervous, and tired with packing my trunks. There’s nothing 
tires one like packing.” 

“ Then you have packed? You do mean to go away? ” 

No,” she said, shaking her head. No, I’m going to 
stay.” 

“ I don’t understand.” 

I am going to tell you,” and she drew a long breath. 
“ I hadn’t stopped to think ; I had tom everything down, 
and had set the maids at work, and my rooms were all dis- 
mantled, and it was nearly four o’clock. I don’t know how 
it was, just then something came into my mind like a sharp 


284 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


little prick. How did I know I ought to go and break with 
my father and cut myself off from him for ever, for it 
would mean just that. It made me very angry, just the sug- 
gestion that I ought not to go. I put it away from myself 
and went on assorting the letters and papers I wanted to 
burn from those I wanted to take with me. But I couldn’t 
fix my mind on them, and the sharp little stab came back 
again and again. How did I know I ought to go, how did 
I know I shouldn’t commit a sin doing a thing like that? 
I don’* love my father as I ought to do, for he hasn’t been 
very — very affectionate to me, but he’s my father all the 
same. And after a good while fighting with myself I threw 
away the papers, and got ready in a hurry and went down 
to the church in Street.” 

“What did you go there for?” asked Paul under his 
breath. 

“ To see the priest I go to for confession,” said Leonora 
simply, while Paul’s face grew dark. “ I knew he’d be in 
his confessional, he’s always there Friday and Saturday. 
And while I was waiting for him I grew bitter and I felt 
worse and worse about it every minute, and I almost made 
up my mind I’d go away without making my confession. I 
was so afraid that he’d tell me I ought to stay.” 

“ What right has he to tell you whether you ought to go 
or to stay ? ” said Paul between his teeth. 

“ Why, because I asked him, I suppose. He wouldn’t have 
told me if I hadn’t asked him.” 

“ Why should you ask him more than anybody else ? ” 

“For one thing I hadn’t anybody else to ask, and for 
another I think he would be more likely to know what was 
right than anybody else, he would be more disinterested, 
he would have experience, and he would know what the 
Church teaches as the duty of children in such cases.” 

“ And he told you to stay — you, a young pure girl — to 
stay in the house with that woman? It is infamous. He 
should be made to suffer for his interference.” 

Leonora turned a startled face toward him. “ I don’t 
understand you,” she said, looking at him with perplexity. 
The expression in her eyes disarmed him. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


285 


“ I beg your pardon,” he said, colouring. “ But I can’t 
help thinking families are better off without the surveillance, 
the intervention of outsiders.” 

“ Then you agree with him,” she said, with a look of 
relief. “ For he put my duty so clearly before me that I 
could not help seeing it, and giving in. He said families 
had to keep together and respect the tie of blood; that I 
must submit to my father’s authority, that neither the law 
of the Church nor the law of the land warranted me in 
defying him and leaving his house and going to that of 
strangers.” 

“ But you must see that this can’t apply always ; the 
circumstances of the case are quite exceptional.” 

“ That was just what he said. He said he knew he had 
given me very hard counsel to follow. At first I would not 
consent to say I would do as he advised, but he showed me 
my duty so plainly I finally made up my mind to do it. 
Then he said, to encourage me, I suppose, that he didn’t 
believe it would be long before I could go away with my 
father’s consent, for that inevitably my presence in the 
house would be painful to him and to — to — her. And he 
showed me how much better it was for me to bear a good 
deal of humiliation and pain than to do something that 
my father never would forgive, that would separate me from 
him for ever, and something that would be a scandal before 
the world, and would injure my own conscience.” 

I cannot agree with him that the happiness of an inno- 
cent girl, her position, her future prospects, her whole life, 
in fact, should be sacrificed to a man who has forfeited the 
respect of everj’^body of decent morals.” 

I don’t think people will visit it on me,” said Leonora. 

Do you ? Why should they ? They won’t imagine I liked 
my father’s doing it. And they won’t think anything about 
it one way or the other after the first noise of it dies out, 
will they ? And they’ll just forget me after a while, if they 
don’t see me. And they won’t see me, for I shall never go 
into society again — never — never.” 

‘^You won’t lose much by not going into society,” re- 
turned Paul in a hard voice, quite as if he were angry, but 
19 


286 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


it is probable he was only trying to keep down some un- 
seemly emotion. “ You won’t lose much by not going into 
society; but there is no justice in your being driven from 
the place in it that you have a right to, that belongs to 
you in every sense. I can’t see how any one could counsel 
it; how any one could feel justified in advising you to put 
yourself in a position that is, to say the least of it, ques- 
tionable. There should not be a possibility of doubt about 
your attitude toward this marriage. You should sever your- 
self sharply, clearly, from your father. It is insufferable. 
I cannot see how any man can see it in any other light — any 
man, or any priest either, for the matter of that.” 

“ But if I did leave my father, if I did what I planned 
to do at first, it wouldn’t help my position in society much, 
for I should go to Mrs. Warren to-morrow, and nobody 
would know, please Heaven, where I was or what I had 
done.” 

“Whether they knew it or not, you would have done 
right; you would be safe from criticism.” 

“ Somehow I don’t care about criticism. This cut has 
gone too deep for me to care what people say.” 

“ I wish you would make up your mind to do what your 
first impulse was to do, to go to Connecticut and rest and 
think it over. Anything you decide to-night will be prema- 
ture, ill-considered. I ask you, 1 he g you, to do this.” 

“ If I could do it I would. There are so few people who 
care what I do ! But don’t you see my conscience won’t let 
me do it now ? ” 

“ Not since you have been told what to do,” he said, cold- 
ly turning away from her. “ I see it is idle to fight against 
that power.” 

Leonora started. “ Do you suppose I would do anything 
that was against my conscience if a priest, if any one, told 
me to do it ? ” 

“ I am afraid I do suppose it.” 

“ Then I think you are unjust, prejudiced, and harsh, and 
I do not want to talk about it any more. I was glad, if 
anything could have made me glad this wretched day, when 
I thought you had come to me out of real friendship; but 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


287 


you can’t be friends with people you don’t respect, and you 
can’t respect me if you think that.” Leonora started up, 
as if to go away, then grew very pale, and caught the arm 
of the chair and sank back on it again. 

“ I don’t mean to be harsh, and I think I’m not unjust. 
Maybe I’m prejudiced, but every one is that; your life’s 
leaned all one way and mine all another.” 

“ Yes,” she said faintly. “ And we can’t see things ex- 
cept just as we’ve been brought up to see them. Don’t let’s 
talk about it any more.” 

But I must talk about it. Why should I stand still 
and see you following bad advice and having to go through 
unnecessary suffering? Do you suppose I don’t care what 
happens to you? Do you suppose I would have come here 
to-day if — if I hadn’t cared ? ” There was a moment of 
silence. “ A man has a right,” he went on in a steadier 
voice, “ to protect a woman he likes, even if he never gets 
any thanks for it. That is how we stand. I’ve — liked you — 
ever since the first time I saw you. And let me say, I’ve 
never seen any reason to doubt the way you feel toward me. 
But that’s neither here nor there. If I could keep trouble 
away from you — if I could stand between you and it — I 
would do it, even though it made you like me even less 
than you like me now. And that’s why, even though you 
tell me not to talk about it any more, I am going to say 
this one thing. Consider how it strikes me, a man of the 
world, neither better nor worse than the rest of them, to 
see a woman, pure and good and young, exposed to the 
influences, the surroundings of people of the stamp that 
will fill this house to-morrow. Consider whether, being in 
the same world as you, I don’t know your disposition, your 
temperament, your prejudices better than some Irish priest 
does, who takes care of and directs the servants in our 
kitchens. Is it unreasonable to suppose I’m a better judge 
than he of what will injure you and what will make people 
think less of you? Can’t I tell better than he, being born 
in the same walk of life with you, what you’ll suffer, what 
you’ll be exposed to, what injury it will do you? ” 

I don’t care what injury it may do me, if I only have 


288 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


courage to do right/^ Leonora hurriedly interpolated with 
subdued vehemence. 

He took no notice of the interpolation and strode on in 
the path of dictation. “ Can’t I judge better than he can 
how these influences may undermine your whole character, 
spoil you for life ? ” 

“ He knows my character better than you do ; he knows 
the flames of hell itself won’t hurt me if I’m doing right,” 
said Leonora very low. 

I had hoped you were not on such terms of intimacy 
with your director,” he replied scornfully. “ I see I’d better 
not have come; it’s a revelation to me. It would pay men 
in the business world to find out the secret of the power 
of these Romish priests.” 

“ You’ll never find it out,” said Leonora under her breath. 

“ I don’t suppose I shall,” he returned bitterly. “ I only 
wish one of the class had never come across my path. I 
don’t like to be baflled, though. Can’t I see this — this ad- 
viser of yours? But I suppose he is only to be consulted 
by the faithful, and the female faithful at that ! ” 

Leonora did not answer, did not even raise her eyes. 

Can you tell me his name,” he asked angrily, “ or is a 
woman sworn to secrecy? Is it part of the business that 
she doesn’t reveal the name of her confessor ? ” 

Leonora got up slowly; she seemed very tall as she stood 
with one hand behind her on the arm of the high-backed 
chair. And she looked very handsome, quite a young queen, 
and the sight of her inflamed the angry jealousy in Paul’s 
heart beyond all discretion. 

I don’t know any reason why I should not give you the 
name of my confessor,” she said in rather a low but a per- 
fectly steady voice. “It is O’Farrell. I don’t remember 
what his first name is, if I ever knew it; but you have only 
to ask for Father O’Farrell.” 

Paul with a cruel deliberation took out his memoran- 
dum-book. “ I’d better put it down,” he said. “ There are 
so many O’s — it is” (writing) “O — O — O’Flaherty — O’Flan- 
nery? ” 

“ Ho,” returned Leonora quietly. “ It is — O’Farrell.” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


289 


Oh, yes, I beg your pardon,” said Paul, a cruel stab 
in every syllable. He wrote down the name and put the 
book back in his pocket. “ I shall certainly go and see this 
counsellor of yours the first leisure day I have. Is he a — 
young man — or is he old? Wise, of course, he is — but I’d 
like to know whether I’m to meet the keenness of youth or 
the experience of age. In Wall Street we always like to 
know something about men before we tackle them. It gives 
us a not unfair advantage, for they have the right to look 
us up, too, , if they have the wish.” 

He paused and looked inquiringly at her. 

“ I can’t help you,” she said, “ for I don’t know any- 
thing about his age.” 

“ Oh, only approximately, I mean.” 

“ I don’t know even approximately, for I have never 
seen him.” 

Paul gave an involuntary start. The demon of jealousy 
is first cousin to the demon of doubt. Being in the state 
of mind that he was he could have believed anything of the 
Irish priest, and almost anything of Leonora; he could have 
believed she did not tell the truth. 

“You have never seen him?” he said between his teeth. 
And a very baleful light flashed from the eyes he bent on 
her. “ I don’t quite understand you — I had thought you 
said ” 

“ I will explain it to you, and then, if you please, we will 
never refer to it again,” and the light in her eyes was not 
any too lambent. “ The day that I left Meadowbum last 
June I came back to a house with only servants in it, and 
very bad ones at that. I was very lonely, for I hadn’t a 
friend in America, and was very unhappy because I was 
afraid I had done wrong in speaking as I did to Mrs. Pel- 
letreau. I wanted to go to communion the next day, which 
was Sunday. I went down to this church late in the after- 
noon and went to the first confessional, nearest the door. 
I had to wait a good while, but when I got into the con- 
fessional I was glad I had waited and gone to it, for the 
priest in it was kind and wise; he gave me good counsel 
and set my mind at rest. After that I went to the country. 


290 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


as you know. When I came back in the autumn I remem- 
bered this confessional, and every week I have been to it 
and have always had good advice, which I have tried to 
profit by. It has been chiefly about spiritual matters. I have 
not had to speak of family matters, nor of anything that 
concerned other people. The priest does not know my name 
nor where I live nor anything about me, except that I told 
him last June that I had been twelve years in a French 
convent, and that my father was not a Catholic. It isn’t 
likely that he remembered that till I told him again to-day. 
Penitents are not in the habit of talking of anything but 
their own faults and doubts, and are strictly charged not 
to talk about the mistakes and sins of others. When one is 
in grave trouble, as I am to-day, it is, I am sure, permitted 
to talk of other people in just so far as they affect one’s 
line of conduct toward them. I hope you are satisfied that 
I have not been indiscreet ? ” 

“I didti’t accuse you of indiscretion,” he returned, with 
a hard ring in his voice. Certainly he did not like to be 
contrarie in Wall Street nor out of it, nor to be put in the 
wrong. “ While I understand perfectly the value you put 
on Father O’Farrell’s counsel, I don’t quite see how you 
could go to him every week for a conversation of half an 
hour or so, and never see him, and not know whether he is a 
young man or an old one. You’ll admit there is a difficulty 
there.” 

“ In Wall Street,” returned Leonora deliberately, there 
is, I believe you said, a habit of — looking up people and the 
places they are associated with before you — tackle — them? 
Don’t you think it would have been as well to have ‘ looked 
up ’ a confessional before you ^ tackled ’ a confessor ? ” 

You are right, perhaps,” he answered icily. “ I ac- 
knowledge I should have examined my ground.” 

“ But I will give you what help I can. A confessional 
— let me see — how can I describe it ? A confessional is some- 
thing like a big wardrobe, with three divisions in it. The 
middle one, in which the priest sits, comes a little further 
forward than the other two. The side ones are smaller. 
They have a short curtain before them, hanging from the 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


291 


top; there is a kneeling-bench inside. In the partition 
which divides them from the central one, in which the priest 
sits, there is a small grating about six inches square, very 
closely barred. You can’t, if I remember right, see any- 
thing through it, but of course you can hear when the priest 
within speaks to you. There is a little sliding door which 
covers the grating. When some one is confessing on the 
right side the sliding door on the left is shut, and vice versa. 
The person on the right side of the confessional cannot 
hear what is being said in the left side, but the priest can 
hear distinctly. The curtain of which I spoke is about 
two-thirds of the height of the partition. It is, I suppose, 
put there to conceal the person inside from criticism of 
those waiting outside. If some one was in great trouble, 
and was crying — as I was to-day — it is kinder that stran- 
gers should not be able to look in. I suppose that is the rea- 
son it is put there. I forgot to say in front of the middle 
compartment where the priest sits there is a door with a 
sort of lattice that lets in air. That is all I can remember 
about it; of course there are slight differences in different 
countries, but they are everywhere that I have been substan- 
tially the same. I cannot but think that it is all adapted 
for the purpose. It is the result of so many hundreds of 
years’ experience that one feels it must be judiciously 
planned. I hope I have made it clear to you ? ” 

Very clear,” he answered, bowing. 

“ I would add,” she said, “ that the priests in all large 
churches hear so many hundreds of confessions in the course 
of a month that it might be difficult for Father O’Farrell 
to remember about me, if you left it long. Therefore if you 
can go soon you will have a better chance of having an in- 
telligent judgment in my case.” 

I shall make it my business,” he replied in a suppressed 
voice. What it was that was suppressed it would have been 
difficult to say. It might have been any one of a large 
number of emotions. “ As I don’t see that I can do anything 
for you, I will say good-bye.” 

“ Good-bye,” said Leonora, not putting out her hand. 
“ Thank you — for coming.” 


292 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


The hall door shut behind him after this, his first, and 
now probably his last visit to her. How many times she 
had secretly dreamed of his coming, of what she should say 
to him, of how she should welcome him without seeming to 
welcome him, and please him without seeming to know 
she had the power to please him. And now it was all 
over, the dreams and the realities. What a day it had been ! 
What it had brought to her, and what it had taken away 
from her! She shivered, she felt cold and faint; there was 
a low chair near the fire and she pulled it nearer, and sat 
down with her elbows on her knees, leaning forward and 
gazing into the coals that had lost their glow and were 
gradually covering themselves with a faint whitish-gray veil' 
of ashes. Everything had come to an end this cruel day, 
her home, her dim hopes about her father, and her keen 
hopes about Paul Fairfax — Paul Fairfax as he had grown 
to seem in her imagination. He was another man than 
she had secretly figured him; she had thought he was re- 
served, proud perhaps, but with deep tenderness in his 
nature, and a power of devotion and capability of sym- 
pathy worth that of a hundred ordinary men. And she had 
found him hard and cold and narrow and prejudiced. 
Despicable; yes, that was the word, she had found him 
despicable. And you cannot have any illusions about a 
person you despise. And you cannot but despise a person 
whom you find to lack all that you had credited him with 
before you knew the truth about him. Yes, she despised 
him, and she felt that her interest in him was gone out, 
just as the fire on the hearth was going out, and was cover- 
ing itself with a film of light-gray ashes that would soon 
be darker gray, thicker, and harder, and then — dead. It was 
a pity she had wasted so many thoughts on him. It was 
sickening to have made such a mistake ; mistakes seem some- 
times more humiliating than sins. You can repent of sins 
and have it out with yourself and begin again, but mis- 
takes — they take the heart out of you, you canT trust your- 
self again, nor the person in whom you’ve been so fantastic- 
ally deceived. It hasn’t come from God, nor has it come 
from the devil. Where has it come from? Just from your 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


293 


own inherent weakness and folly, ignorance and untrustwor- 
thiness of judgment. It’s you, you, you. Just you. That’s 
the worst of it. 

Leonora knew little of the world, the great complex 
awful sea of evil unspeakable over which her course lay. 
By reason of her youth and inexperience she was ignorant 
of the rocks, the maelstroms, the counter-currents, the quick- 
sands. But she had a compass within, which sometimes 
fluttered in her breast and wavered and faltered before it 
steadied itself; but it was sure to point right in the end. 
She had been taught to watch it, to learn to read it, to follow 
it with simplicity, to respect it. And that compass, an edu- 
cated conscience, will generally bring even the least far- 
seeing of us into port. It is the near-seeing that is the more 
pertinent to the purblind race of miserable men.” Fix 
your eyes on the compass and steer accordingly ; don’t strain 
them to make out the distant line of the horizon; mind 
your compass and go ahead. 

Leonora had never thought this out, but she dumbly 
knew it, though she didn’t know much about physical laws, 
and not a great deal about spiritual ones; but it was safe 
to say, if she minded her conscience she could not go far 
wrong in foul weather or in fair. 

The weather, though, had been particularly foul that 
dark day, had it not? Oh, she wished she were dead and 
out of it all; why did she have to be bom, and why were 
the illusions of youth and the hopes of being happy given 
to her, and why was the energy to do good work put into 
her heart and the material and mental power to do it made 
part of her lot, if all in a moment everything was to go to 
crash and she were to be left with a heap of ruins around 
her, and no way, even, out of the wreck; no cleared space 
that she could find her way to and collect herself and look 
about for some refuge? 

If we had the tendency to abandoned grief in middle 
life that we have in youth there would certainly be few 
octogenarians. A degeneration of the capacity for suffer- 
ing saves the human race in a way and increases the aver- 
age length of life. 


294 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


But Leonora had not thought this out either, and the 
years looked very long to her, very long. The shorter 
measures of time even filled her with dismay. It might he 
two or three months before her father consented to her 
going away, if he should consent at all. Perhaps the War- 
rens would not want her; why should they? NTobody wanted 
her; even at the convent they loved her, but they knew 
she had no vocation, and she could only go back there as a 
humble teacher, or worse, as dame pensionnaire. She would 
be neither one thing nor the other, neither of the world nor 
of religion. And should she be allowed to teach, she could 
only teach very humble things to very little children, for 
she had not gone through any rigorous examination, such 
as the nuns had to pass before they were permitted by 
the government to teach. And she hated to teach. She 
would rather make dresses or hats if she had to sup- 
port herself. Probably she would have to support herself. 
There were many chances that she would. If she had to 
leave her home by reason of growing evil there that made 
it impossible for her to stay, she knew her father well 
enough to know that he would never forgive her, he would 
disinherit her if she went against his commands. NTo, the 
Warrens would only be a refuge for the moment. She could 
not count upon it for a home. Besides, it would be impos- 
sible to stay in Connecticut and not meet Paul Fairfax 
sometimes. And that — she would die, she would go to the 
ends of the earth, rather than do that again. 

KTo, that crossed the Warrens off the list altogether. She 
took the telegram and the letter from her pocket and tore 
them in pieces and threw them on the smouldering coals and 
watched them turn and twist and grow black and brittle; 
they did not even blaze or seem to be on fire, they just 
ignominiously died, as everything else had done to-day. 
Heavens! She would not have believed it, if any one had 
told her when she woke up that morning, that before the 
day was over she would know that Paul Fairfax cared for 
her, and that knowing it, she would be more miserable 
than she had ever been before in her life. Cared for her! 
What did he care for about her? That she had some good 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


295 


looks perhaps, and that she dressed well, and that people 
talked about her being admired. He must have a very 
poor, cheap idea of her, if that was all that made him care 
for her. He believed that she couldn’t be trusted to do right 
if there were evil people around her; he believed she would 
do whatever a priest told her to do, whether it were right 
or wrong, whether it went against her conscience or not. 
If a man believed that of her, she never wanted to see his 
face again, never. It would be a happy life, indeed, to live 
with a man who felt that way! And he, what guarantee- 
had she of- /^^m? If he believed she could fall into evil 
any moment, why should she not think the same of him? 
Certainly much more reasonably, for a man had double the 
temptations and no religion generally to hold him back, 
only ambition, only le respect humain. Oh, no, she ought 
to thank God that she had found out in time how unchar- 
itable and narrow and hard he was, and how miserable a 
foundation his feeling for her was built on. Why, what 
is there for a man to care for in a girl that hasn’t any- 
thing than more or less good looks and a way of saying 
things that pleases him perhaps? Oh, that would make a 
happy marriage! That would be a life worth living! She 
ought to thank God that she had found out in time. She 
ought to be willing to suffer all she was suffering to have 
escaped such degradation. But oh, how miserable she was! 
How her heart seemed to have turned to lead within her, 
how she wished that she might die and never see the light 
of such another day as this! 

The thoughts she thought were very many, and as the 
time passed on, she didn’t move, but sat still, gazing into the 
dying fire, with the brittle blackened bits of paper lying 
on the ashes. And at last the little clock on the mantel 
above her struck the hour of eight. It was a musical voice 
in which it spoke, sweet, chiming gentle thoughts, a little 
melody so unobtrusively happy as to be almost pensive. 
Leonora started up and put her hand on the mantel to 
steady herself and glanced at it, and thought of what the 
priest had said that afternoon in the church. 

“ Don’t look ahead, don’t speculate about any more 


296 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


of the future than you can see on the face of the 
clock/’ 

She drew a long” breath; she meant to do that. Heaven 
helping her. She had asked for patience and hope, and she 
made an act of confidence in God and turned to face her 
life as it lay before her. 

The first human milestone on the long journey on which 
she started forth that moment was the servant who stood 
obsequiously in the doorway announcing that she was 
served. Dinner! she had forgotten about that. She won- 
dered when she had eaten last. Hot since breakfast, she 
thought; she remembered the houillon had choked her when 
she tried to swallow it in the midst of her packing. She 
certainly must eat, perhaps she would feel better when she 
had eaten; perhaps it would give her courage to tell the 
servants that she wasn’t going away and that the trunks 
in her rooms would have to be put back in the store-room 
and that the other rooms on the floor below hers next her 
father’s must be put in order. But she was not going to 
think of that till she had eaten dinner. 

She ate her dinner, as much of it as she could, and tried 
to be very deliberate about it. Then she went back to the 
little colonial room in which she had been sitting, and where 
a lamp had been lighted and the fire renewed and where the 
evening papers had been laid. She did not dare to look at 
the papers, but tried to keep herself well in hand till she 
had broken the news to the servant who answered her ring. 

“ Tell my maid to come to me, and tell George to go out 
and engage two men to move some furniture for me to- 
morrow morning. And let Mr. Hungerford’s room be put 
in order to-night or the first thing in the morning. Tell 
the cook I want to see him at once. And — oh, yes, let 
George be on hand as soon as possible after he comes in 
from engaging the men. And let the servants have their 
breakfast a half-hour earlier than usual in the morning.” 

The chef came, and to him she gave the orders for a 
dinner for three people to-morrow night, going quite into 
detail, and growing more self-reliant at every word. She 
did not feel afraid of them at all, these human machines. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


297 


who seemed to have no motive power but self-interest and 
curiosity. She had tried to do them good and make them 
serve her with a little faint feeling of affection, but she 
knew she had failed to inspire it, and she did not even 
speculate on what they might think when they found the 
engines were to be reversed and the day’s work was to be 
undone, and she was not going away as she had planned. 

What earthly difference does it make to me what they 
think ? ” she said to herself, as the chef went downstairs per- 
plexed to communicate the strange development of the plot 
to his brothers and sisters in the servants’ hall. When the 
maid came panting in, eager for orders, an unusual state 
of feeling for her, Leonora boldly said she had concluded 
to postpone her journey, and that the chambermaid was 
to go with her, the maid, to her sitting-room, and wait till 
she came up and directed them what to do. Then she sat 
still for a few moments, to seem to deliberate. She heard the 
maid fly downstairs, and the buzz of voices reached her 
even through the padded doors, and then she heard the two 
women go up the servants’ stairway, and by the banging 
of the heavy door she knew George had gone out to engage 
his men for the morning. She must go upstairs and set the 
maids at work. 

On the first floor, when she reached it, she paused for a 
moment, then went into the library, which was a large room 
in the rear of the house. She took a key from a drawer 
and unlocked the door of a room next it that was always 
kept locked. It had been her mother’s room; beyond it was 
her father’s dressing-room, into which it opened; then came 
his sleeping-room, and beyond that again was a room of 
very good size which he used for his books and trunks and 
clothes-presses. It was pretty full, and the emptying of it 
would mean more derangement to him than even the giving 
up his sleeping-room, or almost the library. No, she had 
thought it over, there was no other place to prepare for the 
newcomer but just — her mother’s room. That room had 
seemed sacred to her always. She often went there and 
shut herself in and said her prayers. It was very faded 
as to furniture and very unartistic as to decoration and 


298 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


twenty-five years old as to style. There were a few yellowed 
photographs hanging about and a half-length picture in pas- 
tel of the little boy who had died before she was born. The 
key of the writing-desk was gone when Leonora first came 
home from the convent last year. She had always wanted to 
ask her father for it, but had not had the courage. Perhaps 
it was empty, she did not know. 

She struck a match and looked about for the electric 
light. There was nothing but the old-fashioned tarnished 
gas-jets of twenty -five years ago. She liked it that her 
father had not had the electricity put in when it was fitted 
in the rest of the house. It looked as if he had meant to 
keep the room always unused. Alas for the infatuation 
that had taken possession of him! The thought softened 
her a little toward him. She knew he had not shown any 
sentimental feeling about the place, but there must have 
been something in his heart deep down that had prevented 
its desecration; though it was neglected, it had never been 
threatened with desecration till now. 

The truth was that, like most men, he did not want his 
feelings harrowed, it was the business of his life to get away 
from what was painful. If the room was done over, there 
were one or two sets of drawers that must, of necessity, be 
emptied, and the desk would have to be gone through. It 
looked more like the unregenerate selfishness of a world- 
bitten nature than like any deep-down tenderness of heart 
about the past; but if Leonora got any comfort out of the 
other view no one ought to grudge it to her. 

The servant brought lights when she rang, and at the 
same moment George appeared to report that the men would 
be at the house at seven-thirty in the morning to move the 
furniture. 

They will begin by taking down the bed and the cur- 
tains here, and taking apart the wardrobe, which is too 
large to go up the stairs; they can take all the chairs up 
and the lighter furniture. Do not have the dressing-table 
nor the chest of drawers nor the desk touched till I am 
here.” 

George looked keenly interested. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


299 


“ And they are to be put — where, miss ? ” 

“ In my room, and that furniture is to come down here. 
But not until this room is thoroughly cleaned. The carpet 
is to be taken up and the floor waxed, and the rugs from 
my room brought down here.” 

And the curtains ? ” gasped George. 

“Yes, and the curtains. You will have to get cleaners 
and men to wax the floors. I did not think of that when 
I sent you out. You must go at once, get a couple of 
women, those I had in the autumn worked well. You know 
the address, in Twenty-seventh Street? Go there as quickly 
as possible. There is no time to be lost. Everything must 
be in order at seven o’clock to-morrow night. And — oh — 
send a despatch to Roux, telling him to have two men here, 
not later than eleven o’clock, to set up and polish the furni- 
ture brought down from my room. Make them understand 
there is to be no failure, remember.” 

Then with a leaden heart and a slow step she went up- 
stairs, where the maids were waiting for orders. She gave 
orders without stint; there certainly was no lack of work. 
It was nearly midnight when she dismissed them, “ dead- 
beat,” but upborne by the dramatic sense of something 
coming, something very exciting, but quite impersonal; like 
being at the play, you know. If they had been older they 
might have thought differently and apprehended that they 
themselves might have a minor part to enact; it might be 
for them the beginning of a Drama of Exile from the com- 
fort and order of the Hungerford servants’ hall. 

As for Leonora herself, exhausted in mind and body, she 
fell asleep as soon as her head was on the pillow, and only 
waked when the light came streaming in at the window that 
in the dead-beatness of last night every one had forgotten 
to close. She started up and looked around her. Where 
was she? What did it all mean? These heaps of clothes 
on chairs? These gaping open drawers? The vacant ward- 
robe, with its doors swinging back, the empty bookshelves, 
the dismantled chimneypiece ? Then, as if she had had a 
stunning blow on the head and were just beginning to 
grasp at ideas after it and pick up filmy threads of con- 


300 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


sciousness, she knew but too well where she was and Vvhat 
had happened. A moment passed, and then with a groan 
she threw herself back and hid her face on the pillow. Mid- 
night despair is sometimes more tolerable than despair in 
the garish light of busy day. And this was busy day knock- 
ing at the door. There was no time for tears, scarcely for 
prayers. The thought of what she had before her almost 
stunned her, but she soon got herself in hand. The sleep 
had done her good, and she was young and life was strong 
within her; it had been severely bruised by the rattling 
blows of the past twenty-four hours, but bruises are not of 
necessity fatal. 


CHAPTER VI 


A t seven o’clock that evening she walked through the 
rooms critically to see if they were all in order. 
The litter of demenagement was obliterated; in the 
room that had been shut up for twenty-five years there was 
no trace of the sudden attack that had dislodged the past. 
The furniture from Leonora’s room looked as if it had 
never been in any other, her rugs seemed at home on the 
newly waxed fioor, her pictures covered discreetly some of 
the most salient ravages of time on the wall-paper. A fire 
was burning in the well-blackened but not esthetic grate, 
two well-groomed handsome lamps brought up from the floor 
below shed a welcoming softened glow, and the tarnished 
gas-fixtures were taken away. There was no dressing-room, 
but that was not her fault. She could not add a dressing- 
room to a house in thirty-six hours. Withal the room was 
pretty and attractive and comfortable, and she had done her 
best. She glanced into the library, the door of which stood 
open into this. It was, as always, in faultless order, lighted, 
warm, fresh. Her father’s dressing-room on the other side 
was in the exact order in which it was always kept; the 
servants had been well drilled in the care of this, if in 
nothing else in the house. And beyond it was the big 
boot- trunk- clothes-press room, more important in his eyes 
than any other part of his establishment. It was such a 
man’s room, not a touch of decoration, no amelioration of 
hard utilitarian lines : having things when he wanted them, 
having them where he wanted them, having no disturbance 
of mind in searching for them — this was the key-note of 
the boot-room of Oscar Hungerford, Esq. — the terra firma 
on which his feet had rested solidly for many unmolested 
years of domestic liberty. 

20 


301 


302 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Yes, everything was clean, everything was in order, she 
had done her best, thought Leonora, as she made her way 
drearily upstairs. There was but half an hour left to get 
ready; she opened the door of her room, where nothing was 
clean, nothing was in order. The chambermaid had roughly 
dragged the bed, after the men had set it up, into the corner 
which Leonora had designated. The mattress was on it, but 
the sheets and blankets were not unfolded. The different 
pieces of furniture stood aimlessly about, the waxed floor 
was bare and much scratched by the moving of furniture 
across it. Her clothes, where were they? The dress she 
was going to put on, where was it? Deep silence reigned. 
In the irregular work of the day the maid had forgotten 
perhaps what time it was, and had gone down to enjoy 
a half-hour of gossip below. Leonora put out her hand to 
touch a bell; a chest of drawers stood on the floor in front 
of it and she could not reach it. Oh, no matter. She 
would dress herself; at least she would have silence and 
inununity from curious eyes for half an hour. She was so 
tired she did not care much what happened, if only she 
could get through the next two or three hours without break- 
ing down. 

It was half-past seven o’clock as she reached the last 
step of the last staircase and looked up and down the 
wide hall. All was clean, all was in order, not a trace of 
the wild scrimmage of the just-ended twelve hours. The 
servants had worked well, she must give them that credit, 
even if her maid had forgotten to come up and lay her 
clothes out for her. She had not forgotten to deharhouiller 
herself though, for Leonora caught sight of her and of the 
chambermaid leaning stealthily over the balustrade, very 
dainty in their most accurate black and white. The two 
men were in the hall, as she had told them to be. They 
moved noiselessly about, and you could almost hear them 
listen to the least echo of the sounds in the streets. They 
felt it was the hour of destiny, though they would not have 
put it exactly in those words. 

These quick criticisms had kept her mind filled, and in 
a certain way had excluded dread of the meeting, which 


THE TENTS OP WICKEDNESS 


303 


every tick of the clock brought nearer. She went toward 
the door of the colonial room, where last night she had 
talked with Paul Fairfax, and it gave her a physical sense 
of suffocation and pain; turning, she went back across the 
hall into the large drawing-room. She was sure they would 
be late, and something might even have happened that they 
would not come at all. 

At that moment there was a sudden sound of wheels, 
which stopped before the house. The two men were “ at 
attention” in an instant, and the door was thrown wide 
open before' the footman could get off the box and open 
the carriage. Leonora, frightened, bewildered, started back 
into the drawing-room as the cold wind swent into the hall. 
She had not a moment to think what she should do, where 
she should receive them, what she should say. She shook 
with terror; no child of six could have felt more helpless, 
dazed, unequal to her task. She had meant to think what 
she ought to do while she waited for them; she had been 
sure they would be late, they might even not come at all 
to-night! And here they were coming up the steps, and 
she — ^what should she say — how should she greet them? She 
went forward bewildered, a dreadful beating in her ears, 
absolute chaos in her thoughts. What shall I do ? ” she 
said to herself. What shall I do ? I cannot, — I can- 
not ” 

She was pale to the lips, but that was the only sign of 
agitation. She walked toward the door, which she reached 
just as her father stepped across the threshold. 

^^Your train was on time, wasn’t it?” she said, as 
glancing at her quickly, he bent a little toward her. She 
put her arms around his neck and kissed him. He looked 
back a little anxiously toward his companion close behind 
him, and said, with a nervous attempt at ease: 

“ This is your — your — new — I mean this — this is my 
wife ” 

The wind almost swept the newcomer into the hall; her 
light boa blew off. Leonora stooped and picked it up and 
put it upon her shoulders, saying: 

Oh, what a gale ! Why don’t they shut the door ? ” 


304 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“Yes, why don’t they?” she exclaimed, with something 
of imperiousness and impatience in her tone. 

The dreaded moment was over; Leonora had not had to 
touch her hand, to say, or obviously to leave unsaid, any 
word of welcome. The blood flowed quickly, evenly, through 
her veins again; she drew a long breath, the meeting was 
over. It is only the unknown that cows us. 

They stood for a moment huddled aimlessly together in 
the hall, while the door was being shut and the servants 
being loaded with wraps and bags; but it was only for a 
moment, perhaps less. The new mistress moved forward, 
a sense of ownership stiffening every line of her slender 
figure, accentuating every tap of her delicate foot, sharp- 
ening every glance of her keen eye. It was evidently a 
maxim with her to begin as she meant to go on. 

“ And this is the drawing-room,” she said, going forward 
into it. “ Humph, humph,” tapping her foot and glancing 
around. “ It isn’t half a bad room, good shape, good size, 
but bare, hare; why don’t you have some furniture in it, 
Oscar, my love? And I thought you said the house had 
all been done over ? I don’t see it, for my part. ” 

“ Well, you would have seen it, if you had drawn as many 
checks for upholsterers and painters as I have had to,” 
Oscar, he^ love, replied, with tant soit peu of irritation in 
his voice. 

She laughed a low but not a pleasant laugh, a laugh that 
rippled, but over hard stones, as she quickly passed from one 
thing to another. She ran her fingers along the keys of the 
grand piano, which stood open. Her skirts trailed over the 
floor with a sort of regal abandon. She threw down or 
dropped off whatever happened to gene her in the way of 
wraps, which an evil-eyed maid who followed her picked 
up with an unpleasing smile and added to the armful that 
she already carried. She watched the graceful movements 
of her mistress, for graceful they unquestionably were, and 
covertly glanced more than once at the happy bridegroom, 
who looked none too happy. 

“Why don’t you come upstairs?” he said, standing in 
the drawing-room door, as the valet took his overcoat and 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


305 


hat. ^‘You’ll have plenty of time to see the rooms after 
weVe had some dinner.” 

“ Oh, no, no ! ” she exclaimed. I want to see everything 
on this floor now, and I want you to show it to me.” She 
put her hand on his shoulder, with a sort of deflant little 
caress, and looked into his face. She was charming her vic- 
tim, and he began to relent. 

All this time she had practically ignored Leonora’s pres- 
ence, and the latter had dropped back and occupied herself 
with giving directions about the disposition of what had 
been brought in from the carriage. But this was not what 
the usurper meant; while she charmed her victim she must 
keep her foot on the neck of the presumably embittered one 
she had dethroned. She shortened her inspection of the other 
rooms, and came back to where Leonora was standing with 
her hand on the back of the high colonial chair where she 
had stood last night when she said good-bye to Paul Fair- 
fax. She was thinking more of last night than to-night at 
the moment; the scene was as vivid to her as if he stood 
there in front of her now, with his face flushed and his eyes 
filled with jealous fire: she could see him writing down the 
address he had asked her for. 

I shall never come into this room without seeing him 
just as he looked then, so determined and so overbearing and 
so almost vicious. It isn’t my fault that I can’t get it out 
of my eyes. It’s the way I am made, I suppose.” She had 
not been in the room since the night before ; she was saying 
to herself it would be the last time she should come from 
choice. The day had been one of such pressure that she 
had never distinctly allowed herself a minute to call up a 
thought of him; but of necessity he, and what he meant to 
her, had never been absent from her mind ; he was and always 
must be a part, welcome or unwelcome, of her inner life. 
Not necessarily of her affections; they might be cured of 
him ; not necessarily of her physical being, which time under- 
takes to change ; but necessarily of her soul’s experiences, of 
which are wrought, which makes part of, ourselves. 

Choose well ; your choice is brief but yet endless ” 

She had not heard the soft swish of silken skirts until 


306 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


they were upon her; she started and turned toward the door 
where the interloper stood. 

Oh, colonial ! ” the latter exclaimed, glancing from floor 
to ceiling. “ If there is one thing that chills me to the core 
of the heart it is a colonial room. Prim, cold, chaste! All 
that we are not 1 Oscar, why didn’t you tell me you had a 
colonial room in your house ? I should never have come to 
it — never! We are not Puritans, are we, mon No, no, 

we are not Puritans, we are just gay and happy and fond 
of each other and eager to make the most of life. Life! I 
drink to it ! ” she cried, catching up an old silver-rimmed 
goblet of cut glass that stood on the chimneypiece. She was 
dramatic, she did it well. Her husband’s eyes followed her 
every movement with almost a senile rapture, but he said: 

All the same, I see your goblet’s empty.” 

“Old prose! The glass may be, but the life isn’t. Full 
to the brim ! ” She passed her arm through his and drew 
him forward. “ This is how it will look when we’ve exor- 
cised the dull prim hypocrites of the Mayflower^ and the 

d d old aristocrats of Virginia and all the rest of them. 

This — Look here, Oscar — you’re not looking — This corner 
here shall be all one luxurious divan, billowing with pillows 
of all soft alluring shades of all soft alluring sorts of tex- 
tures, silks and velvets, brocaded and embroidered, and laces 
worth a king’s ransom, stretched over silks worth — worth — 
the Lord only knows how much! I shan’t stop to count! 
And all above the wainscoting great mirrors from top to 
bottom, and lovely shaded lamps reflected in them, and card- 
tables and tea-tables and masses of flowers and Louis XV 
chairs and cabinets full of old Sevres and Dresden and every 
sort of china thing I ever loved ! ” 

She sank down in the high-backed chair from which Leo- 
nora had started away when they entered. “ This horror of 
stiffness and strait-lacedness ! ” she cried as she leaned back 
in it, still holding her husband’s hand, however, as if she 
were afraid he would escape her. “ We’ll send this old thing 
to the attic ! Or no, we’ll put it in the spare bedroom. There 
is a spare bedroom, isn’t there ? But I don’t want any more 
than one. In a city house one never should have more than 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


307 


one. Yes, I think all this furniture might be put in the 
‘ spare room ’ ! It’s always the Chamber of Horrors in a 
city house, isn’t it ? ” 

The mention of the rooms above brought a dark shadow 
over Mr. Hungerford’s face which no further cajoling could 
dispel. He, of course, had no idea what preparation had 
been made, and also no idea to what he owed all these blan- 
dishments. The day had not been one of uncheckered bliss. 
His newly acquired possession had a little palled on him dur- 
ing the long journey, and she had not attempted to conceal 
that she was both tired and bored. It had been an agreeable 
surprise to him that she had roused herself from this humour, 
developed only since the two-days-old marriage, and had 
taken such an affectionate turn. However, it had been rather 
a shock to see her so cavalierly treating Leonora. And if she 
found fault with the newly decorated first fioor, what might 
she not have to say about his quarters upstairs, his precious 
boot-room and all the rest of it, and his failure to provide 
fitting rooms for her? He felt like a frightened schoolboy 
whose mother has him by the hand while she makes the 
rounds of the sweetmeats closet and the larder, upon which 
he has been making inroads secretly. What will she say to 
that mince-pie with a great piece gouged out? 

These were difficult moments to this lover of the easy 
and leather of the disagreeable. Why wouldn’t she go up- 
stairs and have it over with? He had meant to start her 
on her way up, and then turn back with some excuse of 
speaking to the butler. But she had defeated him so far, 
he was afraid. This coming home so abruptly was none of 
his doing. He had meant to stay away for a month or so 
and let Leonora get over the shock. The telling Leonora had 
been beyond his courage. He had telegraphed her because he 
could not bring himself to write a letter to her. And now, 
if he could only bring himself to make the pretty creature 
go upstairs, and get it over with about the rooms ! She was 
fascinating, she was a witch, he was in love with her and all 
that, but he couldn’t stand much more of this sort of thing. 

“ Now let’s plan about this comer,” she said, putting her 
head on one side and looking critically at it. “ Oh, I have 


308 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


it ! ” she cried, “ I have it ! And it shan’t cost you a cent, 
my miser, not one red cent. Aren’t you pleased? Well, I’ve 
just remembered a set of coloured French prints I have, 
such loves! Harvey Blount brought them home for me 
three or four years ago. They are ballet girls in all sorts of 
poses (and in no ^ clothes-es ’ of course) and they are simply 
delicious. He remembered what a devotion I have to the 
ballet, and he knew it would please me. They are framed in 
charming Florentine carved and gilded frames, the kind they 
put madonnas and saints in, and they would make this cor- 
ner, just make it. There is one of them, bigger than the 
others, that he had enlarged from the print and done in 
pastel; he had two done, one for himself and one for me. 
It is so chic. The girl has black corsets and black slippers 
and long black gloves, and she is holding a black mask be- 
fore her face; you can’t see any of her face. Her shoul- 
ders and neck, flesh-coloured tights, and the short ruche of 
flesh-coloured tulle around her waist, are exquisitely painted. 
Her hair is yellow; all the rest is a symphony in rose-et-noir. 
Yes ! ” stepping back and putting her head on one side, “ it 
must be in the middle, where that old engraving hangs now, 
and the smaller ones around it, not too much spread out, 
you know. It will have an admirable effect. Oh, you’ll like 
it! Do you know why he was struck with it? It was odd, 
he said the minute he saw it he meant to own it, for it was 
as like me as if it had been painted from life.” 

Ha, ha ! I thought you said you couldn’t see anything 
of the face. Your face isn’t a black mask, is it? ” 

“ Oh, it wasn’t the face that was like me, it was the legs, 
you know ! ” 

Perhaps if this had been said in the milieu where he had 
always met the woman, it would only have caused him a 
dumb movement of presently forgotten jealousy, for Harvey 
Blount was a known libertine and had long been one of her 
many followers. But there was something in the insolence 
of saying it before his young daughter that stung him. This, 
struck against the jealousy, snapped through his brain like 
fire. 

“Be careful how you talk,” he said in a tone she had 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


309 


never heard before. “ Remember where you are. I don’t 
want anything like that said before my daughter again. Re- 
member.” 

She saw she had gone too far; in her determination to 
shock and wound Leonora she had had the ill-luck to graze 
a sunken mine that she had not known anything about till 
it exploded. She hated the girl, now she had seen her, but 
if she hadn’t hated her she had always meant to get rid of 
her. This would only accelerate matters. She hated him, 
too, for the matter of that; any woman would hate a man 
who spoke that way to her two days after she had married 
him. But she felt sure she could get him under her spell 
again without any trouble. In an hour he would be watching 
her with that “ fool look ” in his eyes, if she chose to make 
him do it. All she wanted was money and pleasure and a 
gay life. And she knew how to get them. Oh, yes. And 
she knew how to get that odious girl out of the house; but 
she must not go too fast. She should never forgive her, 
though, for having made the man she had worked so hard 
to gain insult her in two days — two days only after they 
were married. She would punish her for it, she would pun- 
ish him for it. She would bide her time, but ah ! la ! it must 
be a short time; she wasn’t used to long waits! And she 
touched the two-days-old marriage certificate to make sure 
it was safe inside her dress. Yes, yes, she could afford to 
wait a while. 

She drew back a little and looked down; that was meant 
to mean that she was hurt. “ Come now,” she said in a 
low voice, “ I didn’t think you’d speak that way to me ever 
— least of all so soon after — after — Thursday ” 

She glanced up covertly. He certainly did not seem to 
be melting, she said to herself; she had not the face to cry 
before Leonora and the maid ; it would certainly be wanting 
in delicacy. Ho, she must wait till she got him alone. 
Heavens, if he were going to develop into one of those dif- 
ficult men whom one has to spend half one’s time in keep- 
ing in good humour 1 She had never even thought of that. 
He had always been so facile, the easiest victim of the lot. 
Ho, certainly she had not counted upon this development. 


310 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Well, two could play at that game. She hadn’t enlisted to 
spend her life smoothing and soothing and reconciling and 
making it right with him. Leonora once got out of the 
house and nobody to back him up, she would teach him his 
place, and he would be the one to do the soothing and the 
smoothing and all the rest of it. 

No one spoke for a full minute after her tentative mur- 
mur about Thursday, and it is astonishing how long a minute 
seems under some circumstances. 

“ I don’t see what Thursday’s got to do with it. I should 
think it would be more to the purpose if you made yourself 
ready for dinner,” said Mr. Hungerford in no uncertain.tone, 
and strode out of the room. Leonora heard a gasp, and 
something almost like a grinding of teeth for an instant. 

“ Dinner was for eight o’clock,” she said. Shall I ring 
and tell them to put it back a little ? ” 

No, no,” the other returned, recovering herself but im- 
perfectly. “ I shall be ready before eight.” And she went 
quickly up the stairs, followed by the evil-eyed maid. 

If she had expected to see him upstairs and to cajole him 
out of his bad temper in the privacy of his own room, she 
was disappointed, for he did not dress for dinner, did not 
even go upstairs, but rang for the valet to bring his dressing- 
case and went into the cabinet-de-toilette downstairs. 

Leonora was full of pity for him ; she almost forgot her 
own wrongs. But when he came out of the rarely used dress- 
ing-room he was abominably cross. He missed his familiar 
room upstairs and its comforts. He hated dining in the 
clothes he had travelled in all day, and these stinging nettles 
laid on the surface of his open sore turned him savage. His 
open sore was made by feverish jealousy of an unworthy 
woman’s affection aggravated by self-contempt and by con- 
tempt of her, and by disillusion that had just set in, now 
beginning to be inflamed by fear of the covert sneers of his 
fellows and by the sense of helplessness under a yoke that in 
two short days had begun to gall intolerably. It was no 
wonder that he was abominably cross; but it was hard upon 
Leonora all the same. However, he didn’t vent it upon her 
personally, but confined his venom to the valet and the butler. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


311 


for whom he had rung sharply more than once. Leonora re- 
treated as far off as she could and tried not to look at the 
clock. It would be eight soon and dinner would perhaps take 
his mind off what had annoyed him. Eight o’clock struck. 
He started up, and threw down his unread paper, and looked 
impatiently toward the stairs. Presently dinner was an- 
nounced. That increased his venom toward the man who 
had dared to serve it before the mistress of the house came 
down. The soup was sent back with a scathing reprimand. 
After that subsided and the servant faded out of sight, he 
paced up arid down the room like a chained bear. Were they 
already beginning to treat his wife with disrespect? He 
would teach them. But dark vistas of affronts and avoid- 
ances by his equals on the one side, and half -concealed jeers 
and vulgar effrontery on the side of his inferiors, opened 
menacingly before him. A dogged determination rose in him 
to defend her, to defend himself; but it was succeeded by 
a sickening fear that he might not be equal to the task. For 
inwrought in his very being was fear of the judgment of 
his fellows. He had long since discarded the fear of God, 
but he had substituted for it an abject fear of men. Not 
that he had ever acknowledged to himself that he had such 
fear; on the contrary, he had always carried his head high 
and shown a magnificent independence of attitude in small 
things which had deceived people. But he was not able any 
longer to deceive himself. He knew now in that half-hour 
while he waited for his wife to come down to dinner — ^he 
knew now how much he feared the judgment of men. What 
were they saying about him now, that very moment, at the 
club ? About his having married such a woman and brought 
her home to degrade and perhaps pollute his young daughter? 
About his having put his head into a noose from which he 
could never extricate himself without more loss of honour 
than if he staggered doggedly on and died with it around 
his neck? Infatuation! Yes, in that word it was all ex- 
pressed. He saw then in a blaze of conviction what he 
had furtively feared and put aside and smothered time and 
again since he had known her. He was infatuated with her 
— with that fair gleaming flesh, with those lust-filled eyes. 


312 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


with that indescribable entangling grace of limb and head 
and body. He knew that she was no longer young, he saw 
the devices that she caught at to retain the waning loveliness 
of tint and texture. Other men saw it, too. But they did 
not see it with his eyes! Alas, his eyes — what would they 
not see before many years were over — a siren turned into a 
shrew, a shrivelled, selfish shrew! 

There was a sound of trailing draperies on the staircase. 
He started to the bell and touched it sharply. “ Leonora, 
come to dinner,” he said, striding into the hall. 

Exactly at the foot of the staircase he met his wife in 
evening dress, looking more lovely than he had ever seen her. 
She slipped her hand through his arm, and leaning lightly 
toward him she whispered low: 

“ I’ve kept you waiting ! But I couldn’t resist the im- 
pulse to dress myself in my prettiest gown to do honour to 
the first dinner in my new home. I thought it would please 
you ! I had Smeed put it last night in the travelling-trunk 
so there might be no mistake. I suppose it was a piece of 
silly sentiment, but women’s lives are just a mosaic of such 
pieces. Say you don’t mind having had to wait, and tell me 
my gown’s pretty and that — that — I don’t go badly with it ! ” 

The touch of her hand against his side, the subtle odour 
that her clothes always gave out, the gleam of her white 
arm beneath his eyes, the sound of her lowered voice, no 
matter what the words had been, wove a quick net of cap- 
ture and dragged him into her power again. Before he had 
placed her at the head of the table he had sworn to himself 
to defend her against the world and to think himself hon- 
oured that she deigned to take the place he offered her. It 
was all a matter of the senses; there was only one left out; 
the four seemed in an odd way to combine together to pro- 
duce the fifth. NTo man was ever more drunken, more be- 
sotted by the taste of wine, than by this passion was this 
man of ripe years who had hitherto walked an even path 
through the world and commanded a certain sort of defer- 
ence in it. 

Leonora sat silent; she had not a chance to be anything 
else. It had been her stepmother’s intention that she should 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


313 


be before she saw her, or knew what tactics she must pursue 
to silence her. It was not possible that she should change 
her mind about the matter when she was in the first flush 
of this unexpectedly easy triumph. She had been fright- 
ened, she acknowledged to herself. When she went upstairs 
in that rage she would have sold out very cheap. She 
would have foregone all but her “ thirds ” in the estate, and 
clothed with the respectable name of Hungerford and a 
handsome income, she would have walked forth into the 
green pastures of liberty, thanking Heaven and the consti- 
tution of Dakota for their bounty. Being declassee meant 
little to her. She had lon§ ago decided that, given plenty 
of money, those outside the barrier had a better time than 
those inside it. Frankly, if she had not been rather taken 
at first by Oscar Hungerford’s good looks and distinction, she 
wouldn’t have made half the effort she did to get him to 
marry her. It had been a real labour, it had been no joke. 
She had put a good deal of hard work into it. But when she 
had found, while they were talking about the ballet girls 
an hour ago, how devilish he could turn all in a minute, and 
what sort of a life she might have to lead, she would, as has 
been said, have sold out very cheap. 

That first minute after she got upstairs, however, while 
she was tearing off her wraps and dashing some powder over 
her face to go down to dinner in her travellinsr-dress, think- 
ing that was even too good for him, a sudden misgiving 
struck her. She didn’t know much of legal matters; she did 
not know what value that eertificate had in the courts here, 
nor whether even, if he died, she could have a wife’s third 
in his estate. Or whether that paper he had given her in a 
moment of rapture the day before yesterday, assuring her a 
fortune whether he lived or died, would mean anything if 
he changed his mind. All that was rather appalling. She 
could not live on a name. She ought to have informed her- 
self; it was culpable. She had just trusted him, and had not 
consulted anybody. This reflection changed the face of 
things. She pulled off her travelling-dress, set Smeed hunt- 
ing through the trunks for her prettiest gown, spent twenty 
minutes in intimate communion with her mirror and the 


314 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


cosmetic boxes, and went down the broad staircase with an 
anxious heart. 

And lo! before the first course was over, she saw in his 
eyes the “ fool look ” that she knew so well. Her own blazed 
with contempt, but she kept them lowered. What unneces- 
sary work it had been. The travelling-dress and the powder- 
box would have done the business if she had only kept her 
head. Really, she ought not to exhaust herself in this way; 
she ought to have a care; nothing ages one like worry. To- 
morrow she would see Harvey Blount and set him about 
making inquiries in a quiet way. Harvey was clever, she 
could count on Harvey. Oh, yes, dear old fellow! What 
was for her interest was for his. 

And so it happened again that she was not at the pains 
to speak to Leonora, nor even to look at her. And Mr. Hun- 
gerford had no eyes for anything but the gleaming neck and 
arms across the table, and the lowered eyes and the dimpling 
mouth. 

And nobody missed her when, after dinner was ended and 
they had gone into the billiard-room to smoke together, Leo- 
nora went upstairs to her dismantled room. 


CHAPTEK VII 


W T" N trpne est trop etroit pour Hre partage^ That was 
# / the new Mrs. Hungerford’s maxim, and she had 
judged herself rightly also when she said she was 
unable to endure long waits; her processes were rapid, her 
methods arbitrary. She consulted but one will, and that was 
her own. She had the advantage of conscientious people in 
that she apparently had no conscience. This way of doing 
things saves time; there is much of it consumed by those who 
are weak enough to consider others in their decisions. And 
that class who have scruples as to right and wrong hinder 
the march of events unjustifiably. 

During the long journey from Dakota she had settled 
things in her mind to her own satisfaction. The house must 
be cleared, and she would begin tahula rasa. Leonora must 
go. The servants, good or bad, that Leonora had chosen 
must go. The rules Leonora had laid down would not suit 
her; the house was to be run on different principles, the life 
lived in it would be different, and the machinery must be 
different. If she herself achieved any such triumph over 
social prejudices as would make her talked of and important 
it would not be among the tame cats who purred around her 
pious stepdaughter. Ho, she would strike above all that; 
she would aim at that small but rapidly growing class who, 
often risen from the lowest, call themselves the highest; 
who, mounted by blind luck on the motor car of Money, ride 
a devil’s race over decency and good morals to the topmost 
heights of Fashion, and ally themselves to the most sacred 
innermost band of Pleasure’s devotees. At first she had 
doubted whether all this would pay; she had leaned a little 
toward “ chucking the whole business ” and going in for a 

315 


316 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


life abroad, where they would have a larger range of choice 
in the matter of loose living. But, she had reflected, Oscar’s 
position was rather exceptional ; it would be something worth 
doing to make herself promptly received in this society. She 
would try it, and if it didn’t gene her too much she would 
keep trying for a while. There would be time enough for 
the other fling afterward. But one thing rested assured, 
and that was a clean sweep, a new deal. 

Following out this plan of action, in ten days there was 
not a drop of the original blood left in the domestic body of 
the Hungerford household — that is, if we except the shiver- 
ing valet of her husband and Juliette, Leonora’s now tearful 
maid. It was a high-handed proceeding altogether. There 
was nothing to be said against any of the servants. They 
were not wanted any longer, that was all. If they muttered 
anything about being turned out of a situation in mid-winter, 
they were curtly told by Smeed if they weren’t satisfied with 
two weeks’ extra wages and a decent reference, they could see 
Mr. Hungerford’s lawyer about it any time that they thought 
best. Of course they didn’t think best to see the lawyer, and 
they marched out the day the new ones engaged by Smeed 
marched in. The Figurehead was no longer needed, and had 
to be told so by Leonora, who was very sorry for her and 
who gave her quite a handsome sum of money. This made 
her think she had been badly treated, and she said so quite 
freely to poor Leonora, who did not know, in the whole 
bundle of recent miseries, which was the most miserable. 
There seemed such a large collection of them, each choice 
of its kind. 

The material properties of the establishment seemed to 
be undergoing much the same process of elimination as 
the human. Carts were constantly before the door, workmen 
were hurrying up and down the stairs, furniture was being 
taken out and furniture was being brought in. Leonora 
saw with a pang that her father was ousted from his sleeping- 
room and from his cherished boot-room. These were suffer- 
ing a rapid transformation into a sleeping-room and a dress- 
ing-room for his wife, being the two largest on the floor. 
The long-unused room of the Past, into which his dressing- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


317 


room opened, was being’ fitted up for him. It is not to 
be supposed that there were no scenes consequent upon these 
changes; but they all seemed by some fatal spell to end in 
the inevitable surrender. The colonial room was treated 
more rapidly even than the others; the ballet girls were in- 
stalled in their corners, the divan, the mirrors, the flowers, 
the Louis XV chairs, the bits of old silver, the precious 
china — nothing lacked of the masterly sketch she had made 
on the night of her arrival, and much was added. Duveen 
she might be said to have bought out, and Tiffany’s delivery 
wagon stood so often at the door it seemed probable she had 
not confined herself to antique bric-a-brac, but had launched 
forth into the exquisite creations of the present luxurious 
age, in the precious metals, in gems, and in bijouterie. 

These days were delightful to her. She put absolutely 
no stint upon herself in the matter of the expenditure of 
money. There are some to whom shopping is unmixed pleas- 
ure, and she was one of them. It stood her instead of culti- 
vation, it stood her instead of family affection, it almost 
rivalled love of admiration, it certainly outranked all re- 
spectable forms of amusement. 

And she had never had her fill of it before. All her past 
life she had been stinted ; she had said to herself many times 
that with all the money that was lying around in this rich 
city, mighty little had found its way into her hands. Her 
husband — her first husband, she called him — ^had not been 
a rich man, but he had had a moderate fortune, which she 
had promptly walked through; she had left him with not 
even enough to defend the suit for divorce when it was 
sprung upon him. She looked back upon those days with a 
bitter resentment toward Destiny. That such a woman as 
she should have had to have scenes about milk-bills showed 
that there was something radically wrong in the management 
of the universe. No more milk-bills for her; she had done 
with all that sordid sort of thing. 

In those uplifting days when she was shopping to make 
the Hungerford house fit for her habitation, she had a vague 
feeling that Destiny understood her at last, and had got on 
the right tack and would send her all the wind she needed to 
21 


318 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


dance over the blue and sunny seas that lay before her. And, 
poor thing, she felt a dumb sort of thankfulness; she felt 
almost good sometimes. She thought about giving some little 
thing to one of her women friends who was always in straits, 
and she felt it would be nice to make Harvey a present of 
something in silver for his smoking-room. But she didn’t 
do it. She reflected this perhaps was not the best time to 
do it; she must keep her mind concentrated on getting the 
establishment in working order. 

During these days the young ex-mistress of the house 
spent her time in quite a different way — upstairs alone, sur- 
rounded by the twenty-five-years-old furniture that had once 
adorned her mother’s room. She went out early to Mass 
every morning. She refused herself to every one. She read a 
good deal and wrote some letters, and sometimes took a walk 
in unfrequented streets when the days were fine. It was 
Lent now, and that made an excuse for her not to pay visits, 
and in fact there were none to return, for there were not 
many people, it must be said, who would not think twice 
before they left a card at that door. The scandal caused by 
her father’s marriage had been more than usually unsavoury ; 
in the hurried life of society it was difficult for ordinary 
acquaintances to bestow much thought upon Leonora, or to 
make in their over-occupied minds any very clear picture 
of what all this meant to her. The better people of whom 
she had known most in her short social life, had a great fear 
of being entrapped into meeting the new Mrs. Hungerford. 
They would have been glad to show some sympathy for the 
poor girl, but how were they to do it ? If they went to the 
house, even to leave a card, there was danger it might fall 
into her stepmother’s hands, and the visit be returned, which 
would create very unpleasant complications. It was impos- 
sible to go into the house, if by any chance they should find 
that Leonora could receive them, for who could tell whom 
they might meet ? And you can’t write a note of sympathy 
about your friend’s father’s misbehaviour, can you? And 
you can’t invite a girl under such circumstances to a big 
dinner, because there might by chance among so many be 
some one who would snub her and make it uncomfortable for 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


319 


everybody. And if you asked her to a little dinner, it might 
throw a damp on the whole party and give her more pain, 
poor thing, don’t you know, than it could possibly give her 
pleasure. It was very difficult to know what to do, and so 
they did nothing. They were going to do something cer- 
tainly. Something would turn up. They would meet her in 
the street or somewhere. And the time slid away, and they 
forgot to do anything at all about it. And Leonora kept 
closely housed except for her early morning walk to Mass 
and for an occasional hour in the Park with her maid, choos- 
ing a time when she was sure not to meet any one. No one 
noticed her in the street, no one noticed her in the house; 
she grew paler and thinner every day, but no one saw it. 

Her letters from Sarah were frequent, but for some rea- 
son or other were not cheerful. She had, of course, given up 
her visit since she heard of the marriage ; Leonora could only 
acquiesce, she certainly could not urge her coming. Mrs. War- 
ren wrote, delicately begging Leonora to come to them when 
it was possible. Edward sent her a few lines that quite went 
to her heart. They were all very kind, and if anything could 
have given her pleasure, it would have been to go there. But 
the chance of meeting Paul Fairfax in the train or on the 
street made her shrink from it. No, she might as well make 
up her mind she had no refuge but her room at home, with 
its dear shabby old furniture, with its desk filled with her 
mother’s letters and diaries and books of devotion, with its 
shabby curtains at the windows and its faded photographs 
on the wall, with its absolute seclusion and its stern mes- 
sage to those who loved the world, or feared the loss of it. 
And she saw nobody all day long but her whimpering maid, 
who sat in the adjoining room and made a feint of sewing, 
scarcely taking a stitch, however, and brooding over her 
young mistress’s want of sympathy and her absolute refusal 
to listen to what she wanted to tell her about the terrible 
condition of things in the kitchen under the new regime. 

She went down to luncheon sometimes when she could 
ascertain that there were no visitors, which was not often. 
There were visitors at all hours and at all meals ; the house 
was overrun by them. Sometimes when Mrs. Hungerford did 


320 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


not come home, an intimate man or woman, generally a man, 
would ask for luncheon and take it en attendant. This made 
it uncomfortable for Leonora to go down. Her father left 
the house about ten and never came home till time to dress 
for dinner; it couldn’t offend him if she had her luncheon 
brought to her. This was much against the wishes of the 
man whose duty it was to bring it ; it is surprising what inso- 
lence can be put into the setting down of a tray and the 
shutting of a door. It got rather on her nerves, and after 
a time she told her maid she preferred her going down and 
bringing her luncheon to her. This was a bitter offence to 
the young woman, Juliette by name. She felt it was not 
her place. She had trials enough already. Heaven knew. 
This, of course, she did not dare to put into words. But 
she conveyed it very clearly, as clearly as the man had con- 
veyed his feelings when he set down the tray and shut the 
door. And the luncheon thus brought was always an hour 
late and very disjointed and very cold. And it gave the maid 
a chance to get in much information, by way of excuse, about 
the cook’s temper and the kitchen-maid’s sly tricks, and the 
second man’s bullying ways and the laundress’s intemperate 
habits, and the worse than unbearableness of the new cham- 
bermaid, and how they all fought, and how nobody would 
give her the luncheon, and how she had to wait and wait 
and wait just to get a pat of butter, and how she knew it 
wasn’t what was served upstairs, but was just cooking-butter 
— nothing else. And when she told ’em so, the cook just 
turned on her and said such things to her, and said such 
things about the family, oh! such things about the family. 
And so the next day poor Leonora went down to luncheon, 
and her stepmother was out, and Mr. Harvey Blount, who 
had presented the ballet-girl series and who was waiting for 
Mrs. Hungerford, came into the dining-room and asked if he 
might have some luncheon, too. He was so unutterably of- 
fensive with his ogling eyes and flattering words that the 
whacking down of trays and the jerking shut of doors seemed 
as nothing to her, and she took her cold, scrappy, belated 
luncheon next day in her own room. It had been brought 
up by the hands of Juliette, who would not go down after 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


321 


to get her own luncheon, but wept so profusely that she had 
instead to retire to her own room d jeune and did not re- 
appear till five o’clock. 

That night at dinner there was only one guest, a man 
who was going to the play with Mrs. Hungerford, and Mr. 
Hungerford if he could be dragooned into it. After, he 
was giving them a supper at his rooms. Mrs. Hungerford 
was not in a good humour. Something perhaps had gone 
wrong about bills; her husband possibly had not enjoyed 
paying theni as much as she had enjoyed contracting them, 
or the servants had not carried out her orders, or had been 
drinking Mr. Hungerford’s wine, or had been thieving, or 
fighting with more zest than was quite seemly. The dinner 
was about half accomplished when, with a little restless pre- 
amble, she turned to Leonora and said: 

You weren’t down at luncheon; were you ill?” 

^‘111? Oh, no! Why?” 

“ Nothing, only I’ve often wondered why you’re always 
wanting your luncheon upstairs. I always come down when 
I’m in, if I’m not ill. It seems such an unnecessary thing 
to ask of servants when one can come down. I’ve always 
found it upsets things more than anything else, having lunch- 
eons sent up.” 

“I’m sorry, but I thought it couldn’t put things out at 
all, as I have sent Juliette down to get it, for the last few 
days.” 

“ That is just it,” said Mrs. Hungerford, as if she had got 
the text she was waiting for. “ That is just the explanation ; 
that creature makes more trouble in the kitchen than any- 
body else. She keeps them all by the ears. Positively, I 
am at my wits’ end to get things in order. It is always 
some complaint about Juliette. It really wears upon me 
dreadfully.” 

“ I don’t Hens particularly to Juliette,” said Leonora 
quietly. If you’d like me to send her away, no doubt it 
would be easy to replace her.” 

“ Oh, heavens, no more changes ! ” exclaimed her step- 
mother. “ I’ve gone through as much as I am equal to just 
now, organising this house. You can’t imagine,” she went 


322 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


on, turning to her guest, “ you can’t possibly imagine what 
I’ve gone through reducing things to order, after all these 
years of poor Oscar’s laisser-aller ways. Oh, the mess it 
was all in ! My heart bled for the dear old baby, who didn’t 
know how to straighten things out ! ” 

‘^Why,” said the guest, a renowned sayer of maladroit 
things, ‘‘ I heard a man at the club say that he’d eaten the 
dinner of the winter here in January.” And he beamed on 
Mrs. Hungerford, feeling that he had said the right thing 
and had covered himself with glory. 

The lady of the house would have liked to order the ser- 
vants to take him out of the room. She almost resolved she’d 
throw him and his miserable little supper over, only she’d 
nowhere else to go that evening. So she forced herself on 
very quickly and, as if she hadn’t minded, said : 

“ Oh, it’s easy enough to get things in for a dinner, or 
anything like that. A restaurateur will do all that for you. 
But it was the everyday comfort that was lacking, the home 
life, don’t you know. O Oscar, dear stupid! you’ll see 
you’ll like it when once we get things in smooth working 
order.” And she threw him a flower across the table, and a 
look, oh, a look that would have disarmed the devil. There 
seemed a connection between these melting moods and a tiff 
with Leonora ; he was getting stupid. He wondered what it 
was. And Leonora, as she glanced at him, thought how 
much older he looked and how fretted and how much less 
handsome. 

The flower fell into his plate, which was rather discon- 
certing. He couldn’t pick it out, for it had contracted much 
foreign substance in its fall ; so he only said “ Umph,” and 
let the incident pass without remark, but he was touched and 
flattered. His wife wondered whether it was prudent to con- 
tinue the persecution of his daughter. She concluded that 
it was. 

‘‘ I told your father yesterday,” she said, that you were 
getting morbid, distinctly morbid. Or perhaps you have al- 
ways been so. I don’t know what they teach girls in con- 
vents. I never thought well of convents, but I should think 
they ought to instill amiability and cheerfulness, common to 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


323 


all Christian creeds. Don’t you think so ? ” and she turned 
to the guest, who had been lost in wonder at the tact and 
cleverness of this much-talked-of lady, and who breathed 
devoutly : 

“ Exactly, amiability and cheerfulness, the foundation of 
all Christian creeds. I should say their very foundation. 
How well you have put it. It isn’t only common to them — 
but it is — as it were — it is their — very ” 

But Mrs. Hungerford had no intention of being let in 
for these subtleties; she broke him off with a flippant nod 
and returned to the baiting of Leonora, which was the busi- 
ness in hand. This latter had been surprised into an unex- 
pected though almost inaudible laugh by the turn the con- 
versation had taken, which was perhaps the first time Mrs. 
Hungerford had heard her laugh. It seemed to displease her 
more than the morbid silence of which she had complained. 
“ I will teach her,” she said to herself with her teeth set ; 
“ I will bide my time, but I will teach her what it costs to 
laugh sometimes.” 

The time, however, that Mrs. Oscar Hungerford bided in 
her revenges was always short. The next day poor Juliette 
came upstairs from an hour in the servants’ hall so badgered, 
so bullied, so beset that Leonora saw the only thing to do 
was to send her away at once. So she gave her a dress not 
much worn and a respectable reference and money enough to 
pay for her board till she should be placed, and sent her 
away. Thereafter she was quite alone in her two rooms up- 
stairs. The servant whose duty it was to attend to them did 
not waste much time in the matter. The business of taking 
care of her clothes did not weigh on Leonora. At the con- 
vent she had done it, and last summer at the Warrens’ she 
had not had a maid. She was glad to get out of silly luxuri- 
ous habits. The going out alone rather troubled her, but that 
was only a survival of French prejudices. American girls 
went out alone, why should not she, since nobody minded? 
The necessity of going down to her meals was trying. She 
had more than one tHe-d~tHe luncheon with Harvey Blount ; 
she had many luncheons with other men and women whose 
society was almost as offensive, or only less so because she 


324 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


was ignored and unnoticed by them. There were long 
luncheons, where the women drank and smoked, and talked 
with the men with masculine freedom of speech, only with 
the added abomination of love-making and leering not covert 
in the least. Bravado was the dominant note in this choice 
stratum of 'New York’s advance-guard in the march toward 
European standards of morality. The refinement, the fine 
fleur of French depravity had not yet been reached. The 
Anglo-Saxon does not matriculate readily in the school of 
immorality; he is apt to make a beast of himself instead 
of a devil. They say it takes three generations to make a 
gentleman. However that may be, it certainly takes that 
time to make a decent libertine in this country, and I am 
almost afraid in England, too. This makes our society in 
this generation un pen crasse. But time perhaps will mend 
it; one must wait. 

Leonora would generally slip away long before the 
luncheon ended, generally unnoticed, sometimes disapproved. 
More than once she overheard before she had crossed the 
hall a few words about her going, followed by roars of laugh- 
ter. The dinners were just a little better. Perhaps it was 
because of her husband’s presence that Mrs. Hungerford 
did not lead things with quite so free a hand at dinner. 
Till Leonora was got out of the way for good and all he 
had it always to fling at her that his young daughter 
should not hear profanity and ribaldry. Till some little 
legal matters were securely settled she did not care to run 
any risks, and so at all dinners Leonora was not baited. 
She was simply let alone. Hobody could ask more than 
that. 

At first she saw nothing of the gambling that went on 
after luncheon; the guests all went to the smoking-room, 
and very often did not leave till six o’clock. Leonora, when 
she came home from her walk, had sometimes met some 
of those she had seen at luncheon coming out with rather 
flushed faces. After dinner she, as has been said, always 
slipped away to her room as soon as it was over; but she 
saw the card-tables set out in the drawing-room and in what 
had been the colonial room, and even once in the dining- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


325 


room itself, for sometimes people came in after dinner. 
And sometimes, when she was awake, she had heard the 
carriages drive away as late as three o’clock in the morning. 
She generally heard her father come up to his room about 
one o’clock, sometimes before. He looked worse each day 
when she saw him, harassed as well as jaundiced. And in 
proportion as he lost ground his wife seemed to gain it. She 
had a look of keen zest in living, zest in spending, zest in 
commanding, zest in having her own way. Whether things 
turned out socially as she planned or not made little dif- 
ference to her, she “ sat easy to the world,” in that sense. 
She cared scarcely at all for that sort of thing; but it really 
seemed to be falling into her lap, as things generally fall 
into laps that don’t hold out aprons for them. She was out 
for Pleasure; and the other things thrown in, if it so hap- 
pened. It seemed as if it were so happening; she had rap- 
idly picked up such of her old friends as she knew to be 
above the narrow prejudices of decency, and by unlooked-for 
chance she had been thrown with some eminent men and 
women of easy morals who came tentatively to the house 
to see what it was like, and came again, and kept coming. 
They liked the atmosphere of it, the luxurious rooms, the 
high play, the good wines, the pretty women, the ease of 
it all. Yes, certainly one might do worse if one had no 
morals. Oscar Hungerford’s name had a cachet of its own ; 
it wasn’t like taking up with people without any name. And 
she, oh, she was charming ! What was the use of being crit- 
ical ? Heavens, if nobody had ever done nothing worse than 
that! 

It was rather an important dinner that Sunday night. 
One or two very rich men were coming, and when you play 
high, they are the sort you cannot have too many of. And 
two or three women, oh, well, they were the sort you could 
easily have too many of, if you had any faintish touch of 
decency about you; but they were handsome and had wit, 
and knew how to behave when there was a necessity for it. 
And the hostess was charming, charming. You would not 
have given her twenty-five years, and you would have sworn 
from the other side of the table that she wasn’t made up the 


326 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


very least in the world. But the table was wide and the 
lights were low. 

Leonora always tried to time her entree so as to go di- 
rectly into the dining-room without speaking to anybody or 
being presented to any one but the person who took her in. 
This time she miscalculated, she was half a minute too late, 
people were settling themselves into their places, and her 
stepmother was darting angry looks at her empty chair. 
She was dressed in white, a slender young creature, very 
pale and with frightened, downcast eyes, which she did 
not raise as she slipped into her place and murmured some 
inaudible excuse. She lifted them though, startled by a 
sudden exclamation from across the table. 

Miss Leonora ! Why, I didn’t think that you were here ! 
It’s so long since I have seen you.” 

And pushing back his chair Sancton Stockwell, regard- 
less of conventionalities, got up and came around the table 
to where she sat, and took her hand and expressed warmly 
his pleasure at meeting her, and looked at her critically 
and said. Why was she so pale? The march of dinner was 
stopped till he had finished his greetings, and then- he re- 
turned to his place as if nothing had happened, and as if no 
servants had been kept standing still till he passed, and as 
if no conversation had been kept standing still either. He 
was quite aware that it was not the habit to do what he had 
done, but he knew every man and every woman at the table 
through and through; and he did not care a continental 
what they thought or how his actions struck them. After 
that he did not say anything to Leonora. He did not even 
seem to think of her or look at her. He was unusually silent 
and abstracted, and the people at the table were thinking 
something had gone wrong in Wall Street, and that there 
would be news in to-morrow morning’s papers. Hot that 
he didn’t talk. Oh, no, he talked, he knew what was going 
on, but he was not his genial ready-to-be-amused self ; every- 
body felt it. 

After the first startled feeling Leonora’s colour died 
down and her dread of being looked at by the people around 
her died down, too. She thought it was very kind in the 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


327 


great man to have remembered her; it gave her a feeling 
of pleasure at first, but after, it gave her a feeling of greater 
pleasure to think he had forgotten all about her, and that 
he would not be likely to draw attention to her any more 
by speaking to her, nor make those people look at her again. 
The dinner was not unnecessarily long. The play, the play’s 
the thing, and it would have bored everybody at the table 
to have been obliged to forego it for a long-drawn-out and 
ultra-ceremonious meal. As Leonora reached the foot of 
the stairs in her attempt at a quick and unobserved escape 
she heard a step behind her, and, half turning, she saw that 
Sancton Stockwell had followed her. 

^‘You’re going away so soon?” he said, standing with 
his hand on the rail. 

“Yes,” she returned with a little agitation in her voice. 
“ I — I — generally go — up — I don’t — care for cards, you 
know — I generally have letters to write — Sunday night — 
and things — to do — and I like my own room best.” 

“I’m glad you do,” he said heartily. “I’d wanted to 
have a little talk with you — but — go upstairs — this isn’t any 
place for you — you’re better off in your own room — ” Then, 
seeing the colour flame into her face, he looked embarrassed, 
and tried to change the subject; he felt himself a dolt for 
having told a young girl that her father’s drawing-room was 
not any place for her. It was well he didn’t bungle like 
that in Wall Street, he thought; he would soon be kicked out 
of it if he did. “ You’re not looking well,” he said, getting 
on firm ground again. “ I’m afraid you’re moping. You 
don’t go out enough. You need distraction, don’t you? The 
theatre or something ? ” 

“ Oh, no,” said Leonora, whose colour had subsided a 
little by this time. “ It’s Lent, you know.” 

“I see,” he said, nodding. “But it’s just the time to 
go out of town; everybody that has any sense goes South, 
or goes somewhere out of town in Lent.” Then, abruptly, he 
added : “ Have you seen my daughter lately ? ” 

“ Ho,” returned Leonora, with an increased shade of coL 
our. She had seen his daughter, but his daughter had not 
seen her, whether of purpose or not she could not tell. 


328 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“Well, my family are probably going down to Jekyl’s 
Island in a week or ten days. You’d like Jekyl’s Island, 
it’s the nicest place I know. I have a house down there, 
but I don’t often find time to go to it. I myself have got 
to run over to London next week on business, but some of 
the family will be going down there, and you must go with 
them. How, good-bye. Eemember, don’t mope! Moping’s 
bad for girls.” And he nodded and went away toward the 
card-tables. 

Leonora ran swiftly up the stairs. “ Save me from my 
friends,” she murmured, as she slid the bolt inside her door. 
“ The comfort is he’ll probably forget all about it before 
the cards are dealt round once. Maybe he’s that kind. I 
like him, though. He is nice. But fancy his imposing me 
on his family for a month or so. Oh, heavens, what would 
tempt me?” 

Sancton Stockwell had not forgotten, though. When he 
turned from Leonora on the stairs he found himself con- 
fronting Leonora’s father, and while they went away and 
smoked in the ballet-girl comer, out of hearing of the rest 
of the rest of the party, he said casually : 

“ By the way, Oscar, what’s come over that pretty daugh- 
ter of yours? She looks in for an illness. Don’t tell her 
I said so, it might upset her; but I find her very changed 
from the last time I saw her.” 

“You do?” her father returned, looking startled. “I — 
I — hadn’t noticed anything amiss with her. She hasn’t com- 
plained of feeling ill. She’s naturally rather — rather fair, 
you know.” 

“ Why, when I saw her last she was pink as a rose. I 
never saw lovelier colouring. And to-night — for the first 
moment I couldn’t believe it was she.” 

“ You amaze me,” her father said slowly, fumbling with 
his cigar. “I’ve been very occupied lately — ^you know — 
changes — in your house — in your family make some compli- 
cations — I ought to have noticed — I’ll speak to her about 
it — make her see a doctor or take a tonic. I can’t think it’s 
anything but— but— fretting a little about things. I’ll speak 
to her.” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


329 


“ I know enough about girls to know that acting^s better 
than speaking sometimes. When a girFs a little run down, 
she’s nervous, sometimes unreasonable, almost always unrea- 
sonable, more or less. If I were in your place, Oscar, I’d 
propose her going away somewhere. Very likely it is noth- 
ing but a change she needs, good air and some young com- 
panions and a horse to ride and something to give a new 
current to her thoughts. Why don’t you let her go down 
to Jekyl’s Island with my daughter, say next week or so? 
I’m sending her down. It’s a capital climate, I don’t know 
a better. My family come home very fit always. Don’t 
talk to her about a doctor or anything — just tell her I’ve 
asked you, and you want her to go. My daughter will 
write to her in a day or so, when a date’s arranged.” 

Mr. Hungerford looked as if a great load had been rolled 
off him. The thought of Leonora out of all this and hav- 
ing some pleasure (and he some peace), and the feeling it 
could be done and that he did not have to take the initia- 
tive about it gave him such a relief as almost unmanned 
him. The inertia that had come over him these last few 
weeks had made it impossible for him to defend Leonora 
or himself from the aggressive tyranny of his wife. Damn 
it if I know what’s come over me,” he would say to himself 
as he walked up and down his room at night, while for hours 
longer he knew he was doomed to hear the silences and the 
sudden tumultuous wranglings from the card-tables below. 
“ I’d like to wring that woman’s neck. I’d like to throw 
her out of the window, and yet if she came up this minute 
with her dimples and her wheedling ways I know I should 
give her another check to pay what she’s lost to that black- 
guard of a Harvey Blount. I half believe it’s a put-up 
job between them. She’s always losing to him. She plays 
a good game — why doesn’t she lose to other people ? ” — and 
so on through the weary hours. 

To-night Sancton Stockwell had seen the look of relief 
on his companion’s face when he had proposed the plan for 
sending Leonora away, and he had felt a contemptuous pity 
for him. To be a woman’s slave seemed the last ditch of 
degradation to him. To be her benefactor, her master, her 


330 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


patron, no matter how unworthy she might be, had had its 
charms for him; but the other thing, ah, bah, none of that 
for him. 

‘‘It’s awfully good of you, Sancton,” he said, with an 
attempt at dignity. “ I’ll think it over and let you know.” 

“All right,” returned Sancton; “I’m sure it’s a good 
scheme.” 

Sancton Stockwell did not play that night, much to the 
chagrin of Mrs. Hungerford and her guests. In half an 
hour he excused himself and went away. When he got out 
into the street he asked himself why he had done it. He 
asked himself a good many questions while he was light- 
ing his cigar and buttoning his coat and putting his hands 
in its pockets. He did not go home; he did not go to the 
club; he did not go to any of the many doors that would 
have sprung open with a buoyant welcome at his approach. 
The night was damp, close, murky; no stars shone, no rain 
fell, it was not warm, it was not cold. It just stuck in your 
throat. It was the sort of night that a man might walk 
off a bridge, not meaning to, but saying to himself after 
he had done it (if he had had the privilege of saying any- 
thing) he had no objection, it was all one to him; he didn’t 
lose much by getting out of it, if he didn’t gain much by 
getting out of it. People in their Sunday clothes dragged 
themselves along the pavement, which was not sticky enough 
to make you swear, but just damp enough to make you feel 
unwholesome. The lights at the corner glared stupidly ; they 
did not shine, and when you got a little away from them it 
was very dark. If you sauntered you were chilled; if you 
walked briskly you did not get in a glow. Supposing the 
year to have kept a birthday book, the motto for that night 
would have been “d quoi And Sancton Stockwell, 

as he walked along, kept saying to himself: “What’s the 
good of it all ? ” 

He turned into an unfrequented street, where long rows 
of stereotyped houses stretched on from one avenue to an- 
other just like it, machine-made, weary to the eye. But 
there were living things inhabiting the dreary shells. Each 
width of twenty feet or so of brick or stone contained a 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


331 


dozen or more human beings with their vivid loves and 
hates, their aches and their pains, their ambitions and their 
failures, their creeds and their quarrels; each one of those 
abodes was what they call a home. Yes, the homes of the 
moderately rich. Each twenty feet or more of brick or 
stone and the earth on which it stood cost a large sum of 
money, demanded ample means to equip it and maintain it. 
The homes of the immoderately rich were not far away, per- 
haps around the corner in the avenue, perhaps in the street 
itself. Wha.t about a home? What made one? What kept 
it sound? A strong man? A pure woman? The fear of 
God? The love of children? In how many of these brick 
and mortar shells were any or all of these requirements to 
be found? The immoderately rich, did they set the pace for 
the moderately rich? Did the strugglers beneath, striving 
to rise, look up in turn to them'i Did the poverty-stricken 
below them again, trampled under foot of all, call God to 
witness that they were not the only sinners, but that there 
were others besides them who stole, who lusted after women, 
who swore falsely, who drank, who gambled away their 
children's bread, and that without the excuse of hunger, of 
cold, of overwork, of rage against fate, of multiplied de- 
spair? 

These were old thoughts. Men had been thinking them 
for many generations ; Sancton Stockwell had thought them 
before himself no doubt. He had heard things like them 
often in sermons, he had read things like them endlessly 
in books, but they had never come to him as his own pos- 
session, part of him, till then. 

That lily growing out of the dung-hill — that angel stand- 
ing in her whiteness among grim shapes of hell — that light 
shining in the darkness — the vision stayed with him; hon 
gre mal gre he could not get it out of his eyes. 






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PAET IV 




CHAPTER I 


T he next morning, Monday, Leonora was lying on the 
chaise-longue in her room with her cloak pulled 
around her shoulders, for the fire had not been made, 
and she had rung several times in vain. She had come in 
from Mass, and had eaten her breakfast in the dining-room, 
the windows of which were rather grudgingly shut by the 
man who was cleaning it when she came in. She had felt 
tired after breakfast climbing up the long stairs, but a pile 
of letters brightened the cold room, and she threw herself 
into the chaise-longue and read them eagerly. One was from 
the convent, and that cheered her always. Another was 
from Belinda, and that amused her always. Belinda, as a 
Little Sister of the Rich, was being whirled about from 
winter-resort to winter-resort; she was invaluable to her 
benefactresses when they were a little out of health and 
when time hung heavy on their hands, as it is apt to do in 
hotels in unfamiliar places. 

Another letter was from Sarah; it was long and it con- 
tained a newspaper clipping. Leonora read the clipping 
first. Poor Miss Fairfax was dead! She looked at the 
date. It was more than a week since she died. What would 
that loss mean to Paul Fairfax! It seemed strange to her 
that she had not felt it, even though no one had told her 
of it. A week! It had been a long week to him. The one 
he mourned had been the softening influence of his life.. 
What would he become without it? By-and-by she took up- 
Sarah’s letter and read it. Yes, it had been a great shock 
to Paul, but he had got to his aunt in time to be recognised 
by her and to have her die with his arms around her. He 
had been an angel of goodness, Sarah said, to his Aunt 

335 


336 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Alida, who had entirely given way under the strain, and 
who was unreasonable, impossible. Miss Borda had her 
hands full; Miss Alida would not sleep in any room she 
had ever slept in before, she would not do anything she 
had ever done before. She had always leaned upon her 
sister, and when the prop was taken away she fell prone. 
She moaned and wept and would do nothing she was asked 
to do; Paul was the only one who could manage her at all. 
At last he had persuaded her to promise to leave everything 
to him and to do exactly as he asked her to do. No human 
being had ever shown such patience! If any one had told 
her, Sarah, that a man could be so forbearing, she would 
have utterly refused to believe it. He had given up all 
business interests, everything, in fact, but just taking care 
of and soothing a miserable old woman driven wild by 
grief, who wouldn’t hear reason, and who refused to be 
resigned to the will of God or to accept the counsel of her 
friends. Finally Paul divined that it was the sight of fa- 
miliar things about her that gave her the keenest distress; 
if she could be got away from them, she might in a degree 
recover herself. So with little help from the doctor or 
nurse, who had reasons of their own for wanting to stay 
where they were, he managed to get her to consent to go 
away from home at once. And a week from the day of 
Miss Fairfax’s burial they had gone away to Lakewood, 
where he had telegraphed for a house, got together every- 
thing new in the way of servants and surroundings, and 
where she was probably now more or less peacefully in- 
stalled. Sarah said that, on the morning she wrote, she had 
been down at the dear old house, that was being shut up 
for the first time within the memory of man. The old 
servants were sent away on board wages, and a care-taker 
put in. It seemed very improbable that Miss Alida would 
ever come back; she seemed hopelessly broken, and though 
younger by a year and a half than her sister, had always 
been frailer in health and much weaker in character. “It 
gave me the blues,” wrote Sarah. “What’s the good of it 
all! Living and loving, dying and leaving, making homes 
and breaking ’em up, making ties and snapping ’em off. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


337 


And at the end of it all ^ one bed hard and narrow.’ I 
could find it in my heart to wish I were in my bed hard 
and narrow. It couldn’t be any harder than what’s hap- 
pening every day, nor any narrower than the paths Heaven 
sets for us to walk ift! How, good-bye. You’d better come 
soon, or you’ll find me a first-class pessimist. I’m not sure 
I’m not one now.” 

Leonora lay back in the chaise-longue and dropped the 
open letters in her lap. What had Sarah to fret about! 
What did Sarah know of trouble! She took up the letter 
again and read and reread the part about Paul. She knew 
it by heart, she could see the words when she shut her eyes. 
Why hadn’t Sarah written more about him and less about 
her own pessimism? She wondered how he looked, whether 
he were ill or discouraged or bitter, and whether he said 
a quoi hon, as Sarah did! If ever he got to see the right 
he would be head and shoulders above most men; with all 
that patience and forbearance and tenderness added to his 
strength of mind and his iron will he would be — king. 

At that moment there came a knock at the door, which 
opened and disclosed her father standing bewildered in the 
doorway. He had never been upstairs since he came back 
with his Dakota bride, and the sight of the old furniture 
from below seemed to stagger him. 

Papa ! ” exclaimed Leonora, starting up and flushing, 
but not before he had had time to notice how white and 
tired she looked. This is the first time you have made me 
a visit. You shall have the best chair! ” and she dragged it 
forward. 

“I didn’t know you’d moved these old things up here,” 
he said, looking about him in a confused way. What did 
you do it for ? ” 

“ Why, there wasn’t any time — to — to do anything else. 
I knew you wanted the room downstairs to look nice.” 

He walked to the window and gazed out for a minute, 
and when he came back and spoke again his voice was 
husky. “ You needn’t have done that,” he said, not looking 
at her. You know I always want you to have everything 
you like. There’s nobody has any better right ” 


338 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Papa,” she said, standing by him and putting her hand 
on his arm, “you have always been very generous to me, 
you have given me a great deal of liberty, and as much 
money as I could spend. Thank you for it.” The hand on 
his arm trembled and so did her voice. He sat down in the 
chair she had placed for him, and there was silence. Then 
she pulled another chair up beside his and sat down and 
leaned her arm on it. 

“ You must come up to see me sometimes,” she said, try- 
ing to speak lightly, for it was suffocating being silent like 
that ; “ I can give you afternoon tea — only you never take 
it! At any rate we can have talks, you and I, and it will 
do us both good, won’t it ? ” And she slipped her hand 
into his. 

“Your hand is cold,” he said, starting. “The room is 
cold; why don’t you keep it warmer? You haven’t even 
got a fire. Why do you do such things? You are trying to 
kill yourself, I suppose,” quite angrily. 

“ Oh, no,” she said. “ I don’t want to do anything of 
the kind. I did ring, but they didn’t come.” 

“They didn’t? Well, I’ll see why they didn’t.” He was 
glad to have something to be angry about; anything was 
better than that choking in his throat and that longing to 
put his head down on the shoulder of the child he had 
wronged and ask her pity. He pulled the bell furiously and 
a frightened varlet came up and shook in his shoes at 
the dressing he got. The fire started up and was blazing 
gaily in two or three minutes. The little episode had re- 
stored composure to father and daughter, and they began 
to talk. 

“ Sancton Stockwell says you’re ill,” said the former. 
^^He says I ought to send you away. He wants you to go 
to Jekyl’s Island with his daughter next week. Hid he say 
anything to you about it ? ” 

“Yes,” she answered with a little pout. “But I don’t 
want to go at all, you see ! ” 

“You know her, don’t you?” 

“ Oh, yes, I know her. She’s very nice indeed.” 

“Well, why don’t you want to go, then? You’ll be miss- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


339 


ing a chance if you don’t go. Tell me frankly. Is it because 
you think — she — she — doesn’t want you ? ” 

Oh, no, not that exactly! Very likely she wouldn’t 
mind having me — but I should always be feeling — it wasn’t 
because she wanted me herself — so much as it was because 
— because her father told her she must ask me. Don’t you 
see ? I don’t want to feel I am imposed upon anybody, that’s 
the only trouble.” 

A dark flush came over Mr. Hungerford’s face. “How 
long is it since you’ve seen any of them ? Has the girl been 
here lately?” 

“ Oh, there was no reason why she should come here ! ” 
returned Leonora evasively. “ She came here to something 
or other early in January.” 

Her father turned sharply toward her. “Have people 
stopped coming here since — since we came back from the 
West? Answer me. Have people been nasty to you?” 

Leonora coloured. “Why, no, father; why do you ask 
me ? It’s Lent. I’m not going out — I don’t see anybody ” 

The red flush died out of his face, and it grew grayish 
and sunken-looking. 

“You see,” she said, making an effort to speak easily, 
“ you see, I don’t want to go with the Stockwell girl because 
I don’t know her quite enough not to be un peu genee. And, 
it’s true, I don’t feel very well, and I just want to rest and 
to be among people I’m on the easiest terms with. If you 
think well of my going away, say for a couple of months or 
so, I should like to go to Connecticut to the Warrens. I 
had a letter this morning from Sarah. Thev always urge 
my going. I am exactly as much at home with them as L 
am — as I am — I mean, as I need be anywhere. I think it 
would do me good to go there.” 

“ It must be a dreary hole in winter,” said her father 
slowly, going over in his mind the possibility of the Stock- 
well girl not writing to second her father’s invitation, and 
the difficulty there might be in finding any one else who 
would ask her to go with them anywhere. As has been said, 
Oscar Hungerford feared the opinion of his fellow-men more 
than he feared the opinion of Almighty God. At that mo- 


340 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


merit his soul was writhing with shame — compunction we 
should call it if it were envers le hon Dieu — shame that he 
had lowered himself in the eyes of men to the extent of 
provoking them to eschew his innocent child. The possibil- 
ity of it had never occurred to him till he had taken the 
irrevocable step of marrying the woman with whom he was 
living in adultery. He wns tortured at the consequences of 
his sin, not at the sin itself. Sancton Stockwell and all that 
he represented still stood to him far above the Lord God 
Omnipotent Who reigns eternally — year in, year out; age 
in, age out; world in, world out. 

Don’t trouble about it, father,” said Leonora. “ I’ll do 
whichever you say. Only it won’t be dreary there to me.” 

So it was settled that she should go, and go at once. 
Uncertainty was unbearable to him in his present nervous 
condition; the mere arranging for her journey seemed colos- 
sal to him as he thought it over. Leonora divined all this 
in a moment. She said: 

Why should I not go this afternoon ? There is a train 
at two. It will not take me half an hour to pack.” 

“ They will not be expecting you,” he said uneasily ; 
and you can’t go alone.” 

“ Oh, yes, I can ! And I’ll send them a despatch from 
the station. Papa, don’t worry. You’ll see, it will be all 
right.” 

‘‘I don’t like the idea of your going alone,” he said, 
getting up and walking about the room. 

Why,” she exclaimed, “ all the girls I know go on little 
journeys alone! I shouldn’t wonder if Janet Stockwell did 
herself. And this is the simplest, straightforwardest little 
journey imaginable. I know every step of the way. They’ll 
meet me at the station. How it’s all arranged! Don’t 
worry.” 

^‘I’ll be at the Forty-second Street station to meet you,” 
he said as he went out, with a look of partial relief on 
his face. 

“ Poor father ! ” murmured Leonora under her breath, as 
she closed the door after him and hurried to her packing. 
How glad he is to get rid of me ! ” 


CHAPTEK n 


A t the station he was waiting for her; quite overlook- 
ing the cab in which she drove up, his eyes were 
wandering among the many vehicles, searching for 
his own carriage. 

“ Why, how did you come ? ” he said, looking perplexed 
as he caught sight of her as she stepped back and put some 
money in a cabman’s hand. 

I came in this estimable cab,” she said. “ And I’ve 
sent my luggage by express. The despatch went an hour 
ago. And I’ve had my luncheon, and I feel better already. 
Oh, it’s all hunky-dory. I’m not quite sure about the word, 
but I think it is — ^yes, I know it is — hunky-dory.” She gave 
his hand a little squeeze as he put it out to take her trav- 
elling-bag. She fell into step with him as they went through 
the crowd, and she talked all the time, so that he might not 
ask why she had not come in the carriage and had a servant 
to attend to all these matters for her. She hoped he would 
never know how the carriage had been refused her, and how 
a man even could not be spared to come to the station on 
the box of the cab and get her ticket for her. 

They were rather late and there was a crowd ; getting the 
ticket was fretting to him. He had just time to put her 
into the car and to give her an envelope with a check in it 
and some rolls of gold and silver fresh from the mint, 
when the whistle of the engine obliged him to go abruptly. 
He stood on the platform looking after her with a much 
relieved expression. “Next to giving pleasure by coming, 
it’s good to give pleasure by going,” said Leonora to herself 
with a half-bitter laugh, waving her hand to him as they 
drew out of the great station. 

341 


342 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


It was dark when the train reached Comberford. There 
had been a delay, so they were a half-hour behind time. 
Leonora had thought of Sarah as having to wait for her, 
either in the inside heat and bad air or the outside cold and 
rain of the station ; but when she stepped down on the plat- 
form there was no one looking for her, only two or three 
hard-voiced drivers of shabby hacks, who offered her their 
services. She got into one of the cabs and was jolted through 
the town toward the rectory. It was a dismal night, and it 
is never pleasant not to be met when you have expected to be. 

Of course this was Comberford. But how different from 
the summer Comberford ! They were passing the post-office, 
with the trees that stood before it all bare of leaves and the 
trunks and branches all soaked black with rain. From the 
window came a faint gleam of light. The door was shut; 
no one was coming in or out. She thought of the sunny 
summer morning when Davidge and Paul had come to them 
through the carriages and had talked about the picnic. How 
much can happen in a few months! Paul — ah, she could 
not think of Paul! — and Davidge, enlisted frankly among 
God’s enemies, and she herself, homeless — oh, no, not beg- 
gared! Her father was still generous to her. But home- 
less — 

Would they never get there? All the summer houses 
they passed were closed. From those of the winter popula- 
tion there came little light; there was much matting of 
vines, many storm-doors, a general look of being out of com- 
mission. She would not have known the place. Uncon- 
sciously to herself she had been thinking of it as it looked 
in summer. Heavens! What a dreary hole, indeed, as her 
father had said! And then perhaps the Warrens did not 
want her as much as she wanted them. Or perhaps they 
had been suddenly called away, and the house would be shut 
and she would have nowhere to go to sleep. She wished 
she had not come; she wished herself back. No — she caught 
herself up — no, she did not wish herself back. She wished 
herself under the sod ; if Heaven wouldn’t mind, she wished 
that she could die. Youth and overstrain will produce some- 
times an unreasonable frame of mind. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


343 


At last, here they were at the rectory! There was light 
in some of the windows, but it seemed dim. There was a 
thin, very thin crust of snow over the lawn that had been 
so green in her memory; some stray points of rough grass 
cut up through the grayish white of the snow. The vines 
over the veranda hung down, bare and leafless and coated 
with ice. And as she went along the path her steps made 
the only sound. What a stillness, what a death! After the 
incessant noise of the city, the silence almost frightened 
her. As she went up the steps they creaked to heaven. She 
almost felt the neighbours would run out to see what was 
coming to pass. At last she was at the door. She paused 
to get her breath, to look for the bell — was there a bell? 
She had forgotten; she did not believe she had ever rung it 
before. Oh, it was all so unnatural ! She should never for- 
give herself for being so foolish as to come. She gave up 
the hunt for the bell, and standing very close to the door, 
tapped humbly upon it. She heard voices ; nobody had heard 
her tap. She approached as near as she could, and she dis- 
tinguished a boy’s voice, and then Sarah’s, scolding. Oh, 
that was the flrst thing that had been natural in the whole 
business! She could have wept for joy as she turned the 
la,tch and pushed open the door. 

There stood Sarah with a telegram in her hand, and 
there stood the discomfited messenger who had just that mo- 
ment delivered it. Sarah gave a cry of joy and threw her- 
self upon Leonora, and from the dining-room came hurrying 
out Mrs. Warren and Edward. There was a tumult of 
welcome, of questions, of explanations; they made up to 
Leonora for the last twenty minutes of misery. Sarah for- 
got to finish scolding the telegraph boy, who escaped blithely 
by the open door, and they went into the dining-room, talk- 
ing all together, asking questions and not waiting for an- 
swers, giving hugs and kisses and criticisms, and making a 
senseless but happy babble of welcome, most sweet to the 
ears of the forlorn newcomer. 

Let her go upstairs and take ofi her hat,” said Mrs. 
Warren to Sarah. “ She is worn out and must be hungry.” 

Oh, I don’t want to go away from you even for a min- 


344 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


ute to take off my hat!’^ cried Leonora, taking it off and 
throwing it on a chair. “ I should be afraid I had lost you 
if I went away for a second.” 

“Poor child!” murmured Mrs. Warren, folding her in 
her arms. “ I shan’t let thee go away from me very soon, 
thee may be sure of that! ” 

At last they sat down at the table. The maid had brought 
in the hot tea and coffee, and the fresh rolls and the omelette 
and the crisp shaved potatoes and the cold chicken and the 
salad just as the telegraph boy had arrived. Nothing was 
the worse for the tumultuous arrival save the omelette, and 
the cook wisely beat another one up as soon as she under- 
stood the circumstances. The table was pretty and the 
food was good, albeit the meal was on the low level of a 
country tea, and lacked the conventional decorum of a din- 
ner. The fresh-looking maid tripped in with the old silver 
um shining as no other silver had ever seemed to shine, 
Leonora thought, and it was reckoned no offence for her to 
say so to the girl, who blushed rosy red and dimpled with 
delight. Sarah got up and pulled the shade of the lamp 
a little down, so that it should not shine in Edward’s eyes, 
and brought a cushion for her mother’s back while she was 
up, and they were all talking and laughing — and it was good 
to be there! 

She felt it was a black dream that she had waked out 
of; the sulky, down-looking lackeys around her father’s 
table, the hideous ogling Harvey Blount, the powdered and 
perfumed women who came to play for money with the men 
who had it ; the scent of fruit and of flowers mixed with the 
smell of wines and sauces — they were part of a nightmare 
which had been routed and driven off to where nightmares 
and devils and foul things live by this breath of the pure 
wholesome air of a Christian home. 

She slept that night as babies sleep when a mother over- 
looks their sleep; next day she spent long hours beside Mrs. 
Warren, putting the china away when she washed it after 
breakfast, holding the wool while she wound it, taking mes- 
sages for her to the maids, to Sarah, to the study. She 
could not bring herself to make great confidences to her of 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


345 


all her troubles — she was too reserved for that; but she felt 
that Mrs. Warren understood without being told, and that 
if she waited, perhaps some sudden moment might come 
when she could speak without outraging that something 
within her that held her back from speaking now. All day 
she had been thinking just of herself, drinking in the com- 
fort of being pitied and beloved once more, of being out of 
the enemy’s country and among her own again. The sick 
in body have a wholesome egotism sometimes that demands 
and obtains the ministrations they need, and which other- 
wise perhaps they would not get. The sick in soul have 
similar instincts at times; their bitter need of comfort ex- 
cuses what would otherwise be inexcusable. 

And before the end of the next day Leonora was herself 
solaced and healed enough to look around her and see that 
all was not right with the friends to whom she had come. 
They had been glad to see her, she was sure of that; her 
coming had brightened them, had taken them out of them- 
selves for the moment. But now the bonfire of welcome was 
dying down, throwing up lights on the scene now and again, 
and then fading out, and leaving dreariness. How selfish 
she had been not to have seen at first that there was some- 
thing wrong! She watched them covertly. Edward’s face 
was seamed; his eyes, when she caught sight of him once 
or twice when he was off his guard, expressed such suffering 
that it startled her. And his mother looked ten years older; 
she was wan, thin, bent. The exquisite peace of her face 
was dimmed; it was as if a shadow were hanging over her; 
there was no revolt, only the apprehension of something 
unknown, from which nature shrank back. 

And Sarah — the more Leonora studied Sarah the more 
she wondered that she had not seen the first moment how 
changed she was, how sharpened, how embittered. Her wel- 
come had been genuine; she was relieved to have some 
momentary distraction from the trouble — whatever it was — 
that was hanging over them. But as for midnight confi- 
dences, there were none. Leonora began to see that Sarah 
avoided being alone with her, that she made excuses to leave 
her for occupations which formerly they would have shared. 


346 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


What was it? What did it all mean? Would it have been 
better if she had not come ? Leonora’s intuitions were good ; 
she decided that her coming had not been amiss, that it had 
done them good — for the moment at least. 

Leonora had come on Monday, and this was Wednesday 
evening. They were at the tea-table; Leonora had noticed 
that Edward’s face had relaxed as he came into the room; 
the tea-table was pretty, and Mrs. Warren, behind the tea- 
urn, smiled up at him; Sarah was decanting — or de-jarring, 
rather — some raspberry jelly at the sideboard. 

I hope you’ll overlook my doing all this ^ in the pres- 
ence of the passen-jare,”’ she said; “but I got home late 
from the Girls’ Friendly meeting, and hadn’t time to attend 
to the matter before the tea-bell rang.” 

“ Am I ^ the passen-jare ’ ? ” asked Leonora. “ Because, if 
I am. I’ll overlook the informality if you’ll give me as much 
as I want of that heavenly jelly. Dear Mrs. Warren, I’m 
so hungry ! I never tasted things so good before ! ” 

If they were unhappy, they all made it their business to 
forget it for the hour of tea. Sarah was very amusing. 
She recounted to Leonora their winter gaiety at the rectory, 
the bishop’s visit and the Girls’ Friendly Society’s reception 
and a midday dinner for all the committees of the various 
guilds, and wound up with an entertaining narrative of the 
tea-parties en petit comite that they had given, respectively, 
to the Presbyterian minister, to the Baptist minister, and to 
the Methodist minister. 

“ These last festivities were a conception of Sarah’s,” 
said her brother. “ I advised her to have them all together, 
but that did not meet with her approbation, so we had a 
Presbyterian tea, and a Baptist tea, and a Methodist tea, 
and Dr. Emerson and Miss Borda as the only guests to meet 
them on each of the three festivities.” 

“ Why Dr. Emerson and Miss Borda ? ” 

“ Oh, well,” said Sarah, “ the doctor is rather a public 
character, you know, and I thought it would please the 
ministers. And Miss Borda I wanted for my own 
pleasure.” 

“ Why don’t you have my minister to tea ? ” asked I^eo- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


347 


nora. Mrs. Warren, don’t you think she ought to? I 
haven’t seen him since last summer. I’d like to see him 
very much.” 

Oh,” said Sarah rather tartly, I am sure he wouldn’t 
want to come; we like to give people pleasure when we ask 
them to the house.” 

“ I am sure he’d want to come and I’m sure it would 
give him pleasure,” persisted Leonora. “ And I’m sure it 
would give me pleasure. And you ought to want to give me 
pleasure, Sarah; you know very well you ought to. I am 
your guest and one of your earliest friends.” 

An almost imperceptible damp had fallen on the three 
who were trying to forget they were unhappy. Leonora 
could not divine why; it seemed to her inexplicable; but 
rather from embarrassment than anything else, she persisted 
in urging her desire that her minister should be asked to 
tea. “ Why shouldn’t he be,” she said to herself, “ if they 
can ask all those others whom they don’t agree with any 
more than they agree with him ? ” And, besides, she felt 
sure it was the best thing for them all to have some dis- 
traction. And so it fell out that Father McMillan was asked 
to tea the next evening, and that he came. 

Sarah had certainly not risen cordially to the plan. She 
was only just not uncivil about it when it was alluded to. 
This had piqued Leonora, but it was too late to make any 
retraction of the wish she had expressed. At any rate, she 
felt sure it would amuse them all a little and make the 
evening pleasanter, for Father McMillan could be trusted 
not to be dull, and Edward would have to stay in the par- 
lour and would have to stop thinking of whatever it was 
that was tormenting him, and that would be something 
gained. She was sorry she had persisted, but there had been 
something in Sarah’s tone that had provoked her. One 
shouldn’t ever be provoked, should one? 

It was but a few minutes after half -past six when the 
door-bell rang, and tea was always at seven. Sarah, not yet 
dressed, rushed to the stairway and looked down and saw 
Father McMillan come in, deposit his hat and stick in the 
hall, and follow the maid into the library. She, at least, 


348 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


was in a flutter of delight at the prospect of having her 
minister to tea. 

I might have expected it,” Sarah said between her 
teeth, as she knocked at Leonora’s door. “ Leonora, your 
minister has come. I’m not dressed. Edward won’t be in 
till seven, and mother’s lying down. You must hurry ” 

Leonora was not dressed, either. She sprang from the 
desk where she was finishing a letter for to-morrow’s 
steamer, and began to dress with trepidation. It was dis- 
maying. The first step wrong! She wished the evening 
were well over. Why had she made them ask him ? Sarah’s 
voice had sounded like a jet d'eau of needles and pins. 

Sarah had hurried; disgusted as she was at the guest’s 
ignorance of conventionalities, she had the instinct of not 
wanting him made uncomfortable in their house. She 
pushed open the dining-room door as she passed it to see 
that all was well ordered; she would have liked to put a 
note of admonition on his plate explaining the respective 
uses of the knife and fork. It is probable there was not 
an excess of Christian charity in her heart as she went to' 
the library door, which was open. The visitor was stand- 
ing with his back to the door, so engrossed cutting the leaves 
of some magazine he was reading that he did not turn as 
she went in. Fortunately the lamps had been lighted and 
the fire was good. He stood on the rug before the fire, read- 
ing by the light of a shaded lamp on the mantelpiece. Sarah 
had come quite close to him before he heard her. He 
started and turned and came nearer, quite unembarrassed — 
oh, quite unembarrassed! 

I am sorry not to have been down to receive you,” she 
said, with the instinct, aforementioned, of putting him at 
his ease. But she might have saved herself the trouble — 
he was quite at ease. She sat down. He sat down, too, 
stretched out his feet to the fire and looked into it as if he 
liked it. 

It is a damp, raw night,” he said. That bed of coals 
is good.” 

She thought probably it reminded him of his native bogs, 
for it was bituminous coal, so she only said Yes, she was 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


349 


very fond of an open fire; and, not to hurt his feelings by 
referring to the mode of heating Irish cabins, she sought 
to change the subject. He still held the magazine, with his 
finger between the pages. “ I see you are looking at the 
Fortnightly,'^ she said, glancing at the magazine, the leaves 
of which he had been cutting. “ It is an English review. 
My brother sometimes finds a clever article in it. It is ably 
edited; though, of course, it is not invariable.” 

“ Naturally not,” he said, knitting his brows a little as 
he looked at ' her, naturally not.” 

“ I sometimes think my brother takes in too many peri- 
odicals. Now there is that old magazine, Blackwood’s. 
There is really nothing in it. I often ask him why he 
doesn’t discontinue it. He won’t; he says he’d as soon think 
of discontinuing his grandmother.” 

Ha, ha ! ” said the visitor, with a genial laugh and a 
relaxing of his heavy brows. “I don’t know Blackwoods, 
but I respect his feeling.” 

“ And the Contemporary — one might easily get along 
without the Contemporary and the North American — and 
the Revue des deux Mondes, and the Deutsche Rundschau’, 
and that other one, there, under the pile — I forget its name 
— there, by the heap of the March magazines. Ah, well, no 
matter. If I saw the name I shouldn’t know what it meant. 
It does seem an utter waste of time and money. But I be- 
lieve my brother feels that he must keep abreast of the 
times, and in such a parish as this, made up almost exclu- 
sively of reading people, he must be able to meet them on 
any ground they choose.” 

^^Yes, I can understand how he feels. St. Frangois de 
Sales used to say ignorance was almost as bad as malice in 
a priest, and that knowledge was a kind of eighth sacra- 
ment of the Church. I suppose your brother feels the same 
about his — about his responsibility.” 

Sarah stiffened herself up a little. She would like to 
have told him that she was quite familiar with the writings 
of St. Frangois de Sales, whom she admired immensely, and 
also that the rector of St. Andrew’s was a priest as much 
as he was himself, though of a Church that did not recog- 
23 


350 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


nise the seven sacraments — a Church that had dispensed her- 
self of those which had been imposed upon the faithful by 
corrupt and unauthorised councils. That she restrained her- 
self in saying these things shows that she was well-bred 
au fond] she was in her own house, where he was a guest; 
that sealed her lips, though, unfortunately, it did not veil 
the angry gleam of her eye nor the quick flush on her 
cheek. 

There was a moment’s silence; the priest’s brows con- 
tracted again ; he was pondering his words to And the offence 
they contained. It is naturally hard for any one who has 
but two feet to walk two paths at the same time, unless the 
paths are very near together. Now the Ritualist’s path and 
the Catholic’s path are not very near together, not by any 
means as near as is sometimes fancied. It would be impos- 
sible to straddle them, and even if one could, straddling is 
a manoeuvre which “ makes not for ease nor dignity.” 

“ Blowed if I know what I’ve said to offend her ! ” he 
reflected as he looked in the fire and reviewed his last sen- 
tence. “ I thought Protestants were all keen about St. 
Prangois de Sales. They buy nice little books of extracts 
from his works by the thousand, with all dogma left out. 
No, it can’t be St. Prangois. Oh, I see; it is the priest, or 
perhaps it’s the seven sacraments — probably it’s both to- 
gether. I wouldn’t have done it for the world. It’s so long 
since I’ve fallen foul of a Ritualist; one gets so rusty work- 
ing year in year out in such a parish as this, where the 
people have got the faith, and the only thing you have to 
trouble about is to keep ’em up to practising it. Upon my 
word, I’m ashamed of myself. She’s plucky. She won’t 
speak till she’s got herself enough in hand not to show it 
in her voice. I like her; she’s a lady; she won’t say a sharp 
word to me in her own house. Well, blood tells. I wish I 
hadn’t been such a zany.” 

All this flashed through his mind before one could say 
there had been a pause. He touched the review he was 
holding with the other hand, and said: 

“I was interested in the continuation of an article in 
this. I took the liberty of cutting the leaves. My copy 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


351 


hasn’t come yet; I don’t know why they treat you so much 
better at the post-office than they do me ! ” 

Then he again saw that he had said something that 
affected her unpleasantly. “ I give it up,” he said to him- 
self. “ I’m too old for this sort of thing. I must just go 
ahead and trust to Providence not to tread on any of these 
supersensitive toes.” Aloud he said: “I agree with you 
that we all take in too much periodical literature. It’s an 
unnecessary distraction. In a certain view of it, I’d think 
a man wiser to take his literature century by century, giv- 
ing a year to each, till he’d got a general grasp of the ten- 
dency of thought in each, and then setting himself bounds 
in all that he’d permit himself in the matter of contempo- 
rary writing.” 

“ But the present gets ahead of us, don’t you think so ? ” 
Sarah said. 

Why, yes ; to be thoroughly equipped for work, we have 
to give it a lot more than its share. What you said rather 
comes home to me, for I’ve got to make the rules for the 
men under me.” 

“You mean your assistants?” 

“Yes; you see, my parish is a big one and the work’s 
heavy. I’ve three assistants, all of course a good bit younger 
than I am. It’s a time of training for them; they’re learn- 
ing their business, so to speak. They’ve had their three or 
four years of seminary education, and they’ve some of them 
had a year or more abroad; but that’s only a small part of 
their training.” 

“Heavens,” murmured Sarah faintly, “I should think 
that might be enough ! ” 

“ They’ve got to learn to bring it all down to fact,” he 
answered. “ It’ll be some time before they have parishes of 
their own, and in the meanwhile they have to be, in a very 
realistic sense, under an older priest. How it has bothered 
me a good deal, this flood of new writing — more or less un- 
settling — that’s sweeping over us. I’ve tried to stem the 
tide, but I’ve pretty much given it up. I don’t, of course, 
reckon with distinctly bad current literature, but with the 
tentative putting forth of what their authors modestly call 


352 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


new ideas. Generally they aren^t new at all, but very old 
ones, exploited and exploded and exorcised by experience 
hundreds of years ago. So I’ve given in to belonging to a 
club of older priests, who subscribe to Heaven knows what 
all of modern reviews, and in turn everything comes to me 
and my young men, and they’re free to read it or not, as 
they think best. They generally think best to read it, I 
find, and to dismiss it with a laugh or a shrug, as the case 
may be.” 

This was all such a revelation to Sarah she could scarcely 
get her breath. Romish priests, in a country parish, eagerly 
reading everything in science, religion, or politics, and dis- 
cussing it together! She couldn’t make it a clear picture 
in her mind. She had always thought of them as mumbling 
over their office, or pattering over their beads, or collecting 
money for masses, or sitting in dark confessionals probing 
family secrets and telling women how to treat their mothers- 
in-law. Probably a bat or an owl would have come instinc- 
tively to her mind as a simile in thinking of a Catholic 
priest. If she had taken time to dissect the prejudice, of 
course she would have acknowledged it to be more or 
less unfounded and absurd. But the best of us are crea- 
tures of prejudice; strip us of our prejudices, and we 
should need an introduction to our nearest neighbours, 
and they in turn would need to be introduced to us. An 
open mind, a clear mind — who has one? They are at a 
premium. 

At this moment the door was pushed open and Leonora 
came in, a little flushed from her hurry in dressing, but 
looking very pretty in her pretty clothes. Father McMillan 
met her most cordially and looked at her with the involun- 
tary admiration that her beauty always inspired. Sarah 
seemed a prim little old maid beside her, though there was 
not more than a year’s difference in their ages. 

“ This is the young lady with whom I came down the 
mountain one dark night last summer,” he said as they 
stood facing each other on the rug before the fire. “ After 
that, for two or three months I used to see her at the church, 
and then she disappeared. The question arises, where did 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


353 


she disappear to and why didn’t she stay disappeared once 
she was disappeared ? ” 

Leonora laughed. No doubt you’ve heard of the city 
of New York, remote as it is? People generally know about 
it, but they don’t all know how noisy and horrid it is. And 
I’ve come back from it because it made me ill, and because 
nothing but Comberford air will make me well again, I’m 
sure ! ” 

An invalid ! Dear, dear, how affecting ! But invalids 
must not be kept standing,” and he wheeled a chair up to 
the fire for her, and he and Sarah drew theirs up to it; and 
when Edward, belated and anxious, hurried in, somewhat 
after seven o’clock, he found a very cheerful group closed 
around it. He pulled a chair up beside the priest and sat 
down. His face cleared and he forgot even to apologise for 
being late. There was something contagious in the visitor’s 
easy laugh. Having quite thrown to the winds the fear of 
infiaming people’s prejudices, and having renounced as a 
snare of the devil the temptation to avoid giving offence, 
no prejudices were inflamed and no offence was given. 

“ I was reminding this young lady,” he said, of our 
drive down the mountain last July. And I think I’ve only 
seen you twice since then ; though we live in the same town, 
it’s a different town to each of us.” 

“ But I was glad to find you on the School Board,” said 
Edward. They’ve only done me the honour to elect me 
this year. How long have you been on it ? ” 

“ Only since it was brought home to them that there 
were five Catholic children to every one Protestant in the 
schools. That was four years ago. I can’t say I accomplish 
much, but I’m there, all the same ! ” 

And I hope you’ll stay there, and your successor after 
you, even if you don’t seem to accomplish much.” 

Well, I think you may count on our being on hand, 
even if we don’t seem to get much further ahead than those 
two Jesuit missionaries did, you remember, in the last cen- 
tury, that were sent to an uninhabited island off the coast 
of Japan, where they lived and died and were replaced by 
another two, generation after generation, waiting till the 


354 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


ports should be opened and they should be on hand to get 
in their word ! 

Yes,” said Edward, I remember it. I’ve always 
thought it magnificent.” 

Gritty fellows, those Jesuits are!” said Father Mc- 
Millan with a short laugh, as he sat looking into the fire. 

Gritty fellows ! ” 

Yes, grit multiplied and cemented into a unit with the 
force and weight of a rock.” 

“ That one will business — I wonder no one ever thought 
of it before St. Ignatius. The history of the world might 
have been different if some one had.” 

The maid at this moment announced tea, and Sarah 
started up, saying that her mother was not down yet, and 
if they would wait a minute, she would go and see why she 
had not come. But as she spoke the door opened and Mrs. 
Warren came in. She looked very white, and as she passed 
a chair Leonora saw her put out her hand as if to steady 
herself. 

Father McMillan gave her a quick searching glance. 

That’s a fine face,” he said to himself ; but whew ! some- 
thing’s cutting pretty deep into her. What’s up, I wonder? 
Warren himself looks ten years older than he did last 
summer.” 

The entrance of Mrs. Warren chilled them. 'No one re- 
covered instantly, but gradually the leaven of Father Mc- 
Millan’s good-nature brought them up again. If Mrs. War- 
ren did not gain her ordinary poise, she certainly soon 
became more like herself and ceased to be a weight upon 
the spirits of the others. Though one could scarcely say 
Edward was in good spirits, he seemed more relaxed, more 
normal than he had been in a long while. Certainly four 
people more diverse in temperament could scarcely be found 
than sat around that tea-table, and yet they all four found 
Father McMillan sympathetic. And stronger lines of de- 
marcation than lay between his milieu and theirs could 
scarcely be imagined. Sarah, with a red spot on each cheek, 
watched him critically, from his attitude toward his knife 
and fork to that toward his “brother priest.” But there 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


355 


was no fault to be found with his table manners ; he did not 
tuck the point of an outspread napkin into his collar and 
extend it over his person as far as it would go; he did no,t 
pour his coffee into his saucer to cool as the Baptist minister 
had done; nor did he call to Mary to bring him this or 
that, as the Western missionaries of their own Church fre- 
quently did when they came to Comberford to preach their 
begging sermons. Mo; certainly he behaved like anybody 
else. But then, she reflected, the Irish were by nature quick 
copyists. How many young girls had come into their ser- 
vice absolutely untrained, and almost by magic had become 
admirable servants ! You had only to tell them once. They 
had only to see it done once. Yes, she said to herself, he 
owes that to his nationality. He has almost the manners 
of — a gentleman — ^well, perhaps one ought to say quite. 
Though it was hard to say it, one wanted to be just. Mot 
Chesterfieldian manners of course, but good manners, fair 
“ common or garden ” good manners. He had not made any 
break at all, except coming half an hour too soon. Heaven 
knew how he got the good manners, but he had got them, 
all right ! ” 

After tea, as they sat around the library fire, Mrs. War- 
ren tried to knit, but had to lay it down, and was relieved 
when Leonora brought a big skein of wool for her to wind; 
and Sarah had some Girls’ Friendly work to baste, and so 
it naturally fell out that the two men talked, and the three 
women listened. It was good talk; Edward was more as he 
used to be four years ago; it was as if, during that long 
stretch of time, he had in some way never been at ease with 
the men around him. He had been formerly a good talker, 
brief and incisive, though sympathetic and cordial. But 
since that time, since a little after he came to Comberford, 
he had been neither sympathetic nor cordial in ordinary 
conversation; not much but the brevity and the keenness 
remained. It was not that he had been only surrounded by 
strangers, for classmates and friends of earlier days had 
often been among their visitors; it was as if something had 
gradually been closing round and shutting up tighter and 
tighter his deep, never expansive nature. Two of the women 


356 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


who listened were pondering this; only Leonora was happy 
in the change, and scarcely wondered at it. It seemed to 
her that Father McMillan would make anybody talk. Poli- 
tics, local and general, scientific problems, educational prob- 
lems, race problems, social problems; only never religious 
ones. It was not a discussion, for they seemed to agree 
about everything, to see everything from the same point. 

When the visitor had gone, Edward went directly into 
his study; Leonora finished the last ball of wool, and Mrs. 
Warren shook the scraps off her dress into the fire. Sarah 
rolled up her work. 

“ What’s this ? ” Leonora said, picking up a folded piece 
of paper from the floor. “ Oh, it’s F ather McMillan’s ! I 
remember, he took it out of his pocket to sketch that pro- 
jected branch railway. It’s a note — Why, Sarah, it’s your 
writing! May I read it? What a nice strong hand you 
write ! ” 

She stood by the chimneypiece warming one foot at the 
fire. Yes, you write a very, very forcible hand, even when 
you ask an alien minister to tea; I don’t think he would 
know how to refuse, even if he didn’t want to come. It is 
like a summons to court — I mean the writing is; the lan- 
guage is hyper-civil and urbane. But — why — Sarah! See, 
see!” and she held out the letter, laughing, to her. ^^You 
asked him to come to tea to-night at half -past six clock ! ” 
I didn’t ! ” exclaimed Sarah sharply, stretching out her 
hand for the note and running her eyes over it quickly. 
She flushed and caught her breath. There it was in black 
and white, written by her own hand — half-past six o’clock. 

It is inconceivable. What could I have been thinking of ! ” 

“I shall never forgive you that twenty-six minutes! I 
lost more hairpins, I struck more matches, I dropped more 
things on the floor! Now, if 7 had made the mistake! But 
for you, businesslike, precise, masculinely exact ! Ah, well ! ” 

“I’ve never done it before,” said Sarah shortly, tearing 
up the note and throwing it into the fire. “ And I am very 
certain I’ll never do it again.” 

She had been put in the wrong, and that no one of her 
temperament ever cordially forgives. 


CHAPTER III 


T he next morning was raw and chill. The ground was 
frozen in the shade, but feebly weakening where 
there was none. There was no sun, however, and no 
wind; the scene was gray and hard. Sarah called out to 
Leonora to put on her jacket and come and take a walk, it 
was insufferable in the house. In a few moments the two 
girls were walking briskly down the nearest road that led 
out into the country. 

“ IVe never been on this road before,” said Leonora. 
Where does it lead ? ” 

“About three miles out you pass a pond, all in the 
woods, but that^s all there is in its favour,” returned Sarah. 
“ It’s distinctly hideous, as I remember it ; I don’t see why 
we take it.” 

They were walking very quickly. “ Nothing’s very beau- 
tiful to-day,” answered Leonora, not turning back. “ This 
road’s as good as any other for exercise, I suppose.” 

When they got about two miles out of the town, Sarah 
paused. “ I’m tired,” she said ; “ let’s go a little slower. 
What a dreary scene ! ” 

There were some mills half a mile to the left of them, 
and the road they were following was bordered with strag- 
gling workmen’s houses, growing fewer and shabbier and 
more shanty-like as they grew farther apart and farther 
from the mills. The ground was high, but that was not 
any amelioration. It only increased the desolation, bringing 
more dreariness in sight. Ear off the smoke from some 
chimneys mixed with the kindred gray of the sky. 

“ You have brought me a pretty walk ! ” exclaimed Leo- 
nora derisively. 

“ I told you it was hideous, but you would come. We’re 
357 


358 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


only a mile from the pond and*the big piece of woods it’s 
in. When we’ve seen them we’ll turn back, but not before — 
remember, not before ! ” 

What a forlorn place ! ” exclaimed Leonora. “ What 
dreadful little shanties, and they grow farther and farther 
apart. Heavens, how can human beings live in such hideous 
places! And that — what is that huge thing standing out 
against the sky, ever so far off ? ” 

They were now on the top of the ascent, following a 
board-walk that, with occasional intermissions and break- 
ings, had stretched all the way out from the town. 

“That? Oh, that must be the county gaol! Yes, that 
certainly is the gaol. I had forgotten it was out here; and 
—why, yes — that’s where the negro who escaped yesterday 
was confined, the negro who killed that young Irishman; 
don’t you remember, they were talking about it last night — 
Edward and F ather McMillan ? ” 

“ I don’t remember ; I don’t believe I was listening,” said 
Leonora, her face clouding as she strained her eyes in the 
direction of the gaol. “ Will he be hanged, if they catch 
him ? Is he surely guilty ? ” 

“ Oh, there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that he’s guilty ! 
It’s so clear a case, and feeling runs so high among the 
work-people, there’s been fear of his being lynched. They 
can’t wait the processes of law; many people believe there’s 
been connivance among the officials ; the gaoler and his men 
are Republicans, and there’s a large negro vote here. Race 
feeling runs higher here than in any other part of the State, 
they say.” 

“ What has race feeling got to do with it ? ” asked Leo- 
nora, puzzled. 

“Why, the man that was murdered was an Irishman, 
and all the Irish are Democrats and all the negroes are Re- 
publicans, and there’s a large negro vote here.” 

They walked comfortably on, feeling the better for the 
exercise, even though there was not much that was cheer- 
ing in the scene. They had their hands in their muffs, and 
their steps sounded lightly and regularly on the boards as 
they walked. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


359 


“I must have been out of the room when you talked 
about it last night,” said Leonora. “ I went upstairs, don’t 
you remember, to look for another skein of wool. I’m sure 
I didn’t hear a word of it; I should not have forgotten. 
Tell me all about it.” 

“ Well, there isn’t much to tell. The poor fellow who 
was killed was a conductor on the railroad. I remember him 
very well; his train was the seven-thirty evening train. He 
W’as a good-looking, well-mannered young fellow; everybody 
liked him. He lived only a short way out of the town, in a 
comfortable little house with his mother, whom he sup- 
ported. She is a widow and is delicate, and there’s a crippled 
little girl, the only other child; of course she couldn’t earn 
anything — everything came on him. He was really all one 
could ask — Father McMillan said, one in a thousand. Last 
Monday night ” 

Leonora gave a little cry. “ Last Monday night ! Why, 
I came that night and on that train. I must have seen him, 
looked at him, given my ticket to him! Was that the night 
he was killed ? ” 

“ Yes, that was the night. And only ten minutes after 
the train came in.” 

“ Heavens ! Doesn’t it chill one to graze against a trag- 
edy like that! Why, he — he must have been in his death 
agony — then — before I got to your house. It makes one 
shudder. And I — why didn’t they murder me ? I had more 
money with me than, he had, for papa had just brought 
several hundred dollars to the station for me as I came 
away.” 

Yes ! For he had only twenty dollars and some change. 
The wretch was so stupid he didn’t know enough to go for 
him on Saturday, for Saturday is pay-day. He just hap- 
pened to feel hungry — or thirsty, more likely — and laid low 
for the first passer-by and slugged him as he got into a 
dark part of the road.” 

Oh, how horrible ! How hard to understand ! I should 
think it would kill the mother; and the poor little cripple 
will have to be sent to an almshouse or somewhere, and the 
house will be shut up and sold perhaps — a home that had 


360 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


had so much duty and right living in it. Oh, the poor 
woman I We must go to see her, Sarah. I don^t mean that 
seeing us would do her any good, but it might keep her from 
worrying about money, and that would be something.” 

They walked along in silence, their steps echoing on the 
board-walk. After a while Leonora said thoughtfully: 

“ I can see why he died, if he were so good. It was only 
a moment, don’t you see, and safety for ever after it. But 
for the poor mother and the suffering deformed little girl — 
I wish I could understand. I wish things weren’t so difficult 
to understand ” 

“ Is that the first hard thing you’ve come up against ? ” 
returned Sarah below her breath. If it is, you’ve been 
more lucky than the rest of us.” There was something 
almost vindictive in her low voice and in the expression of 
her eyes. 

“I hnow it’s all right, though I can’t see it,” said Leo- 
nora stoutly. ^^I can make an act of faith if I can’t see. 
It isn’t necessary for me to see. It is more merit for me to 
believe if I don’t see.” 

I wish you joy of your merits,” returned Sarah with 
something like a sneer. “ You ought to have been bom in 
the twelfth century — you seem just a little out of focus in 
the twentieth.” 

“ I don’t feel that, thank you. My standpoint doesn’t 
alter with the ages as — as — ^yours does, I suppose.” 

After that there was a silence, broken only by the sound 
of their regular steps along the board-walk. It seemed a 
pity they should quarrel about the poor dead man, Leonora 
thought. But ever since she came back to Comberford, 
Sarah had seemed to her so aggressive, so personally opposed 
to all that approached the subject of her religion. There 
was a warp, something had gone wrong. They felt it every 
now and again, and then it would pass out of sight till the 
next time it came up, and at each encounter, however short, 
it would seem to have accumulated more or less stored-up 
bitterness. 

By-and-by they came in sight of the wood which they 
had made the object of their walk. The houses were a good 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


361 


way behind them by this time; it was a lonely spot. The 
wood was on the other side of the road, opposite the board- 
walk. Back from the walk in a vacant lot, facing the wood, 
stood a story-and-a-half wooden house, unpainted and shabby. 
It probably had not been built three years, but it sagged 
perceptibly; the chimney was not true, and had lost some 
bricks into the bargain. Some faint smoke was coming out 
of its warped chimney, however, and a few rags hanging on 
the bushes near indicated that the pitiful place was in- 
habited. A little straggling path led up to the front of it; 
there was what was called in that part of the country a 
storm-door. This was simply a projection some five feet 
square; it reached to the height of the front door of the 
house, and formed a sort of lobby which broke the force of 
the wind in rough winter weather on entering the house. 
The door of this inclosure opened outward; the door of the 
house opened inward, so there was supposed to be a saving 
of heat to the room within when any one entered, naturally 
pulling the outer door shut before *the inner one was opened. 

“Here is our wood,” said Sarah a little stiffly, as she 
slackened her pace and pointed across to the sort of un- 
fenced common which led up to a mass of thick under- 
growth, topped by large trees now bare of leaves, but heavy 
with untrimmed branches and twigs. 

“ It looks like the forest primeval ! ” said Leonora. “ The 
only thing old in this horror of newness.” 

“ It is in litigation,” said Sarah. “ A fiendish family 
have been fighting each other for three generations about 
it. Nobody can touch it.” 

“ Well, that^s good coming out of evil, for it’s the only 
thing that’s picturesque in the whole wretched landscape.” 

“ I don’t know what the theological deduction from that 
would be,” said Sarah tersely, “or where the merit would 
come in.” 

“ A big merit will come in if you and I stop quarrel- 
ling,” exclaimed Leonora, putting her arm through Sarah’s. 
“Now, what’s the use? Let’s go home.” 

“ All right,” said Sarah, softening. “ Let’s go on, though, 
just a little farther, and we’ll get a glimpse of the pond.” 


362 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


They had not gone far, however, when Leonora stopped 
suddenly and dragged at her companion’s arm. What’s 
that sort of roar ? Don’t you hear it ? Listen ! ” 

They listened; it was faint at first, and then gradually, 
very gradually grew in force. 

“ It can’t be the wind, for there isn’t a breath of it,” 
said Sarah ; “ it can’t be the train, for the railroad’s in the 
other direction.” 

It’s — it’s coming nearer,” murmured Leonora. Do 
you know, I’m ashamed, but I — I’m frightened. I — wish 
we hadn’t come — it’s so far away and it’s such a lonely 
place.” 

Nonsense ! ” said Sarah firmly, raising her head and 
listening. “ If it were the season, I should say it was the 
swarming of locusts; but it can’t be locusts in winter! 
And hark, it’s coming nearer every second! And oh, good 
heavens ! Don’t you hear the baying of hounds ? ” 

“ Hounds ! ” repeated Leonora faintly. “ What sort of 
hounds ? ” 

“ The morning’s paper said they had got blood-hounds.” 

Mercy, what shall we do ? ” 

“We’ve run into an awful trap. They’ve got upon the 
scent of that wretched negro — that’s what it means. What 
ought we to do ? ” Suddenly turning back : “ Come quickly ; 
come, I say ! ” and she caught her companion’s hapd and 
dragged her along the path by which they had come. The 
awful sound — more awful than any other — of an infuriated 
mob grew louder every instant. The deep baying of the 
hounds was but a minor, an incidental horror. 

“I don’t know what we’d better do,” panted Sarah as 
she ran, dragging Leonora after her. “If we cross a field 
we may come to a marsh — there are some, I know, about 
here — but if we keep to the hoard-walk, we’re in full sight 
all the way, and they may be making for it, too — Stop a 
minute; let me think.” 

They stopped for an instant. Leonora put her hands 
before her face, but Sarah gazed around intently. The hor- 
rible roar sounded louder every second. 

At that moment, though, came a nearer sound, a heavy 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


363 


stick, a man’s quick tread upon the boards approaching 
from the direction of the town. Sarah uttered an exclama- 
tion of relief ; Leonora gave a cry : 

“It’s Father McMillan; he’ll tell us what to do! ” They 
ran forward till they came just opposite the small house 
with its storm-door, that they had passed before, at the be- 
ginning of the wood. Through the roar. Father McMillan’s 
stick echoed but faintly on the planks, though he was strid- 
ing ahead at a quick pace. His face was pale, his eyes were 
fixed on the ^yood ; he did not see them till they were nearly 
in front of him. 

He stopped with a sudden, almost fierce exclamation: 

“ What are you doing here ? Get home as quickly as 
you can. Keep to the board-walk — run — run for all you’re 
worth 1 ” 

But at that instant the first crashing of the underbrush 
in the adjacent wood struck their ears. 

“ It’s too late,” he said with a rough gesture. “ Make 
for that house, get in it — break out a window if they won’t 
open the door — barricade yourselves in — keep quiet as death 
— make whoeveFs there keep quiet — dhurry — I say hurry — 
don’t you hear me? Ah — ^my God! ” 

The two girls, running toward the house, looked back 
involuntarily. With an exclamation of horror they stopped. 

From the underbrush of the wood opposite the road there 
crawled — ran — shot forth — so horrible a being, one did not 
know for an instant whether it was man or beast. It was 
a man — awfully a man — on all fours, scarcely a rag of cloth- 
ing left on him that had not been tom away in the thick 
underbrush — blood discolouring the fragments of his tat- 
tered clothes and staining his strange copper-coloured skin, 
and in his hair were matted dead leaves and briars and dirt 
and sand. The whites of his eyes and the whiteness of the 
teeth, as his jaw fell apart in panting terror and in exhaus- 
tion, gave a horrible expression to his face. A hunted beast, 
and that a beast with a human soul in it! 

As has been said, the poor creature seemed almost to 
have been shot forth from the thicket across the road; he 
fell, collapsed, perhaps senseless, at the priest’s feet. The 


364 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


priest caught his arm, thundered at him, threatened him, 
commanded him to get up. But there was no use, and there 
was no time. He clutched him by the arm and dragged him 
toward the house, a weight that threatened to be beyond 
his strength, for the negro was of large build. Sarah, with 
a quick instinct of courage, ran to help him, but he waved 
her back angrily. 

Can’t you do as you’re told ? ” he thundered. Go into 
the house instantly; do as I said — don’t forget a thing. 
Don’t make a sign of life till I tell you. Barricade the 
inside door the first thing — the front one, I mean — and shut 
up everything else tight. Hide yourselves in the attic if 
they burst in below — Ah, here they are ! ” 

And there they were. The girls had hardly got inside 
the inner door, and bolted it, before they heard the heavy 
dead weight of the negro flung against it and the outer 
door slammed shut, and the voice of the priest, as he called 
out in a tone of thunder, squaring his shoulders against it: 

^^Yes, he’s here. What do you want of him? And I’m 
here. What do you want of me ? ” 

There was a sort of silence for an instant, and then 
there burst forth a roar of rage and defiance and blood- 
thirstiness that seemed to shake the very ground. Those 
inside could not distinguish a word; they were as if para- 
lysed for a few moments, and then Sarah started across the 
room and sharply commanded Leonora to help her close the 
windows and barricade the doors. There were two women 
in the house, who were shrieking with fright, and a little 
child who was crying pitifully. Sarah shook the younger 
woman by the arm and ordered her to shut and fasten every 
window if she didn’t want to be killed, and then she and 
the other woman — who was old — and Leonora helped her 
drag some heavy piece of furniture before the door and close 
the other windows. It was a pretty flimsy barricade, to be 
sure, but it was all that they could do. The shutting of 
the board shutters at the back made it dark in the room; the 
board shutters in front had been shut when they came in. 
The mob were all in front — something there kept them ; they 
had not even noticed the shutting up of the back part of the 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


365 


house. Those within could not distinguish one word that 
was said; it was all like the roar of wild beasts. It rose 
and fell, but it never fell so that they could distinguish a 
single syllable. The two women and the child cried and 
moaned, sometimes shrieked aloud with fright; when Sarah 
threatened to gag them, to tie their hands, her authority 
only subdued them in a measure. Leonora and she crept 
close to the front door and tried to listen; they could hear 
nothing but the panting of the prostrate negro lying against 
the frail partition. Outside, sometimes a shot would pierce 
the thick volume of discordant sounds that enveloped the 
place; it seemed like an impenetrable fog. The hounds may 
have bayed their deepest and rattled their fiercest at the 
chains by which they were held back; one could not hear 
them above the deafening din. 

The length of time that passed seemed interminable to 
the two girls. Once or twice they were terrified by some 
straggler, duller and less susceptible to whatever the mag- 
netic power was that kept the mob facing the house. One 
of the shutters rattled, and a hoarse voice outside uttered 
some curses. Sarah sprang to the bolt and held it with all 
her strength. The same hand, or perhaps another, tried the 
rear door and shook it, while she and Leonora threw them- 
selves against it and silently defied the stupid brute who, 
if he had had the sense, could have battered the miserable 
thing down with one blow of his big fist. After a while 
there was a lull in the storm outside, a very faint lull, but 
it seemed to move the solitary marauder’s interest, and he 
abandoned his attempt at breaking in and crept around 
toward the front. Sarah and Leonora, listening at the 
crack of the storm-door, could recognise Father McMillan’s 
voice, but could not make out the words. The little child 
in the arms of his mother set up a whine that waxed into 
a cry. Sarah sprang toward him, slapped him soundly, re- 
storing silence, and running back put her ear to the crack 
of the door again. At last they could distinguish some 
words. Father McMillan’s voice rose over the discord: 

What am I here for ? Shall I tell you what I’m here 
for ? I’m here to save you, that’s what I’m here for ! ” 

24 


366 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Roars and hootings drowned everything else for several 
minutes, then derisive shouts and hoarse laughter burst 
forth; a stone or two, flung from some one in the crowd 
aiming too high, crashed against the top of the storm-door 
over the priest’s head. He seemed to wait the almost im- 
perceptible subsidence of the tumult, and then he cried out 
in a voice that rang: 

D’ye think I came here to save the life of that poor 
wretch of a nigger? D’ye think I’m risking my own life to 
save hisi He hasn’t got much more time anyhow to live. 
The rope’s as good as round his neck. I’ll leave him to the 
law. And you’ll leave him to the law ! ” 

Wild curses and yells: 

“ There’s where you miss it ! Damned if we leave him 
to the law ! ” 

You’ll be damned if you don’t leave him to the law ! ” 
“We’ll resk it! Crash in the old shell of a shanty! At 
it, boys ! One, two, three ! ” 

But something held them back. The uproar was so great 
that for several minutes the two girls could make out noth- 
ing. For a while there was the sound of Father McMillan’s 
voice, but no words that they could distinguish. He must 
have said something that caught their attention, for the 
noise abated very perceptibly. 

He followed it up by, “ If you get at him, you’ll get at 
him over my dead body — make a note of that ! ” 

“Bully for you, parson! You’ve got grit.” 

“ Grit be damned ! One’s as bad as the other. Give the 
pair of ’em a swing ! ” 

tongue, ye blackguard! Say anither word 
like that an’ I’ll gie it t’ ye in yer bloody mouth ! ” 

Then the voice of the priest rang out above the din: 

Hold yours, Tim Malony ! And don’t raise your fist for 
me. I know I could count on every Irish fist here if it was 
a question of fists. But it isn’t a question of fists. It’s a 
question of— Shall I tell you what it’s a question of ? ” 
There was such an abatement of the noise it was almost 
frightening. 

“Well, what is it, if it isn’t a question of fists?” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


367 


Out with it!” 
and tell!” 

“ I’ll tell you what it’s a question of, if you’ll give me 
time. I want to ask you one thing first. Did you come 
here to revenge yourselves on the wretch that slugged John 
Murphy, or did you come here to kill his mother, the mother 
that he’s worked for ever since he was old enough to earn 
a quarter? Tell me that; because you can’t do one without 
the other — you can’t lynch that nigger without killing her. 
There’s twO' murders to your count ! Yes, and three, for as 
sure as there’s a sun in heaven, you’ll have to kill me be- 
fore you get at him. Three — one, two, three ” 

Another roar of rage, but it quieted down a little sooner 
than before, and he got hold of them again, only to be 
drowned by yells of: 

Stop the damned rot ! ” 

“ He’s only talkin’ against time ! ” 

Up and at him ! ” 

“ There ain’t no time to lose ! ” 

Cries of all kinds followed this. But again curiosity, or 
something else, got the upper hand and there was a sort 
of lull. The priest made himself heard again: 

“ I’ve just come from Widow Murphy’s sick-bed, where 
I’ve been many times day and night since this — since this 
cursed thing was done. She’s very low. I don’t know 
whether she’ll ever get up out of her bed again. She’s 
always been sickly, as you know, but this awful trouble, 
coming on her in a minute so, broke her up completely. 
She’s a sick woman, there’s no denying that. I was just 
going away, when she lifted her poor hand and signed to 
me there was something she had to say. And I stooped 
down, and she said, in gasps and pants: ‘I’ve heard,’ she 
said, ‘ I’ve heard there’s talk of lynching the man that did 
it — donH lei ’em do it. It would hill me if they did it!’” 
There was silence for a moment. “ And I promised her I’d 
try to stop it if I could. It would kill her, there’s no doubt 
of that, in her weak state. And, according to my way of 
thinking, it would be a queer sort of a way to show your grief 
for him to kill his mother. His mother, that he’d slaved for, 


368 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


and that he’d have shed the last drop of his blood to keep 
from pain and trouble! Don’t do this thing, my men, don’t 
do it! You’ll be sorry if you do — I know you’ll be sorry. 
It isn’t as if I didn’t know how you feel. The first minute 
that I heard the news — well, it would have been a bad min- 
ute for that wretch, I’m afraid, if he’d been where I could 
have laid my hands on him. But we’ve all had time to think 
it over — you and I and all of us. I know what the trouble 
is, and I don’t blame you altogether for being afraid there’s 
going to be a hitch about the law. But let me tell you, 
public sentiment’s against it. There isn’t any danger. No- 
body’d dare to override public sentiment in a case like this ; 
I promise you. I’ll move heaven and earth but justice shall 
be done. You know me well enough to know I do what I 
promise. Only keep your hands clear of blood, boys ! 
You’ll never be sorry if you heed my words. You’ll sleep 
better to-night; you’ll sleep better every night as long as 
you live if you keep your hands clean of that awful stain. 
God! But I don’t want to see any of it on my hands! I 
don’t want to see any of it on your hands! It bums deep, 
it eats to the bone; it chills you with fear, it kills you with 
watching, it drives you to the ends of the earth ; you’re never 
quit of its gnawing tooth till the sod’s slapped down on the 
mound above you. And are you quit of it then? Maybe 
it’s only just beginning in earnest then — only just taking 
hold — only just getting a grip on your soul that you can’t 
shake off for all eternity.” 

The priest’s voice, naturally fine and resonant, was vi- 
brating with strong emotion. It did not fail in its work; 
there came gradually a strange, deep silence over the mob. 
The Irish element in it pressed forward toward him; they 
were naturally not of the best class of Irishmen in his 
parish, but they were of a better class than the rest of the 
mob, who were just a rabble compounded of low-born Ameri- 
cans and French Canadians and German workmen and of 
the socialist class, some of whom are always to be found 
around manufacturing centres. Father McMillan’s keen eye 
searched the faces before him anxiously; his quick ear lis- 
tened for the sounds of approaching help with an intensity 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


369 


that racked him. He had been, as some one had shouted 
just before, talking against time, for there were elements in 
the mob that were not to be reached by anything less ma- 
terial than bludgeons and bullets. It was something that he 
had got hold of his quick-witted Irishmen; with almost in- 
incredible intelligence they caught his meaning and sur- 
rounded the house. The thought of the two young girls, 
and of possibly other helpless beings within it, almost un- 
nerved him. Would that paltering militia never come ? Were 
those hastily sworn-in constables waiting for the wax to dry 
on their commissions ? “ There will be bloodshed, there will 
be bloodshed,” he kept saying to himself all the while he 
was standing with his back against the storm-door, search- 
ing the faces of the crowd before him; throwing a sentence 
now here, now there; answering this faint murmur, that low 
growl; keeping their attention, playing upon their feelings, 
winning their confidence ; choosing his words with care, that 
no nationality should take fire from praise given to another, 
no sensitive political nerve be touched, no rival factions be 
roused to wrath. And through it all, listening, listening, 
till he was afraid he should forget to speak. If he dropped 
the rope by which he had caught them, all would be lost; 
he never could get it in his hands again. 

“ Why don’t they come ? Good God ! Why don’t they 
come ? ” The sweat stood out on his forehead, his knees 
trembled under him; another minute and he should lose his 
hold — things began to swim before him 

Hot a minute too soon! There came the rapid clatter of 
horses’ hoofs upon the hard road, the racing of heavily shod 
men along the board-walk, the shout of military orders, the 
warning volley fired into the air. 

“ Save yourselves, men ! ” cried the priest. In God’s 
name, go I There isn’t a minute to spare I Go ! Down that 
hill at the side ! There’s a swamp below there — ^keep to the 
right of it ! Don’t stop till you’re out of sight of this ! ” 

Their quick start in the direction he indicated was evi- 
dence that he had not lost control of them. At the moment, 
if he had told them to stand firm, or to run for the woods, 
or to batter down the house, they would have obeyed him. 


370 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Of course there were counter-cries and efforts on the part 
of the leaders to stop the stampede, but it was too late, the 
mob was disintegrated, the danger of bloodshed was past. 

Half an hour later Sarah and Leonora were being driven 
home in Dr. Emerson’s gig. The doctor was regimental 
surgeon; he had been a little late in arriving on the scene 
of action; an engaged man does not hurry to risk inflicting 
suffering on the one he loves ; he thinks twice before he puts 
himself in the way of stray bullets. It must be admitted 
he had driven up the hill with a quaking heart; he found 
it much more congenial work driving two pretty young 
girls down it ; bending over bloody wounds in the open fields, 
with showers of buckshot falling around him, never had 
pleased his fancy. 

“ They say the Koman Catholic priest was quite plucky,” 
he said, tucking the carriage blanket in comfortably as his 
good horse trotted down the hill. 

Yes,” said Sarah shortly. That’s a national charac- 
teristic. The Irish never seem to mind danger.” 

“ And they love a fight — they dearly love a fight,” said 
the doctor; he felt so relieved, so happy, so just the opposite 
of what he had felt going up that hill half an hour ago. 

^''Father McMillan did not seem to love one,” said Leo- 
nora quickly. “ He risked his life to try to stop one.” 

Oh, yes, yes, I know he did,” returned the doctor a little 
uneasily. In the exuberance of his relief he had forgotten 
that Leonora was a Catholic; he did not want her to feel 
he had undervalued the services that her priest had ren- 
dered. “ I — I — wasn’t thinking of him ; I was thinking of 
Irishmen in general when I spoke. I’m sure, I’m quite sure 
he really did good service to-day. Everybody said he did.” 

‘‘Yes,” said Sarah; “but as the mob was at least half 
made up of his own people, it was but natural for him to 
undertake to deal with them.” Sarah was feeling the reac- 
tion from the intense strain she had been under. She felt 
simply vicious toward everybody, that was the way it took 
her. 

“Exactly,” said the doctor, expanding again with his 
extreme relief. “ Exactly ; it was but natural that he should 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


371 


feel he ought to undertake to deal with them. Well, one 
ought to honour him for feeling that he ought to, and for 
doing it so — so efficiently — for he did efficient service. I’m 
sure, from what I know of it, that he did efficient service. 
And then,” he went on, moralising a little as was his wont, 
having at the same time the intention of patting the Catholic 
Church on the back and pleasing Leonora, and also of show- 
ing that he knew human nature au fond and had broad 
views, the some-good-in-all attitude, “ and then, you know, 
a man in his position, a priest of the Roman Catholic 
Church, stands so free to the world — he has no ties, he 
doesn’t have to think of wife or child, he has nothing to 
lose, no heart will be broken if he is left dead on the field, 
no children will be orphaned by his death, no poverty will 
fall on his house. Ah, no! I have often thought there is 
a great deal to be said for the position of Roman Catholics 
in the matter of the celibacy of their clergy.” 

“ I don’t see why a Roman Catholic priest should enjoy 
being killed any more than the next man,” said Sarah tartly. 

Hurt is hurt, and dying’s dying. I don’t believe many 
men stop to think of their wives and children when they’re 
within range of the enemy. ‘Hear is my shirt, but nearer 
is my skin.’ Some men are brave and some are cowards; 
but all, in my opinion, are naturally averse to being run 
through the body or blown into atoms. And if a man stands 
up before the guns and doesn’t flinch, he’s a brave man, and 
that’s all you can say about it ! ” 

The doctor’s good cob stumbled a little at that point and 
changed the current of the conversation, and in a few min- 
utes more they were at the rectory gate. 


CHAPTER IV 


I T was a week later, the Wednesday in Holy Week. Ed- 
ward was away; he had left home the Saturday before. 
The day before he went there had been a scene in 
the study between him and his sister; Leonora in passing 
through the hall had heard Sarah’s voice. She shivered and 
hurried on; it was the first angry word she had ever heard 
in that house. Sarah had scolded, had mocked, had been 
impatient sometimes, but a word such as she had just over- 
heard seemed to bring down the fabric of the home about 
her ears. The reserve of the mother and son, and the good- 
breeding of all three, had kept the peace. Was she never to 
find real peace in any home? Why was Sarah quarrelling 
with her brother ? What was happening ? 

From that day she saw scarcely anything of Sarah ex- 
cept at meals. Sarah pursued her Holy Week services as 
if they were safety valves for her wrath; she visited the 
poor as if she were an avenging spirit; she swept through 
her household duties, leaving consternation in her wake. 
Mrs. Warren was silent and pale. She generally went once 
a day to church, and stayed in her room the rest of the 
time. Edward’s going had seemed equally a surprise to both. 
The clergyman who came to replace him did not stay in 
the house, mercifully. He had some relative in the place 
who claimed the right to entertain him. There were prob- 
ably expressions of wonder in the parish that the rector 
should choose just this season to go away. But every one 
had remarked all winter that he was looking ill; and it was 
taken for granted that ill-health explained his going away. 

Palm Sunday, the first day of his absence, had been 
gloomy. The purple altar-cloth and vestments did not ap- 

372 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


373 


pear, because the remplagant was not of the same stripe of 
churchmanship as the rector, and he preferred to confine 
himself to the black and white of the Episcopal majority. 
The sermon had been mediocre; the music itself seemed to 
have fallen off. When the people came out, they said to each 
other in undertones, they hoped the rector would be back 
before next Sunday, for this sort of thing was dreary. 

There was a great deal for Sarah to do always, in her 
brother’s absence, about the guilds and associations, espe- 
cially at this season when there were annual meetings and 
elections and entertainments to arrange for. But she 
turned down” everybody who came to her very promptly. 
She knew nothing whatever about it. She supposed they 
must do as they had been in the habit of doing, or ask the 
rector pro tern, what he would advise. 

But the remplagant himself was a keener trial than the 
presidents and vice-presidents and secretaries and treasurers 
of all the societies put together. He was a pottering, incon- 
sequent sort of man. He never knew where anything was; 
he never seemed to recognise that his province was a limited 
one, and that to take the services for a week didn’t mean 
that he need search into the parish records, or lay down the 
law to the sexton, or set the vestry-room clock backward or 
forward, as the case might be. He was for ever ringing at 
the rectory door after service and asking to see Mrs. or Miss 
Warren to know about something. It is needless to say he 
got a good many snubs from the latter and scarcely ever 
saw the former. 

This Wednesday night Sarah had slipped out of church 
when the lecture began. It seemed just more than human 
nature could bear to sit through it; and her pious ejacula- 
tion had been, as she stepped out into the fresh, cool night 
air, “ Thank God, I’m quit of him for at least twelve 
hours ! ” 

She went to the deserted library and threw herself down 
in a deep chair beside the fire, which was almost dead. She 
rang the bell sharply, but there was no response. The ser- 
vants, no doubt, had gone off to their Holy Week services, or 
whatever they might call them. For the moment it seemed 


374 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


to make her more angry than if they had gone oif to drink- 
ing-saloons or dance-houses. She got up and put some coal 
on the fire, turned the lamp higher, and, throwing off her 
hat and jacket, sat down and tried to read. But she could 
not fix her mind on her book. Her mind and her body 
equally refused to rest and recreate. The book fell into 
her lap, and she sat still by force, trying to tire them 
out. What a day it had been! She ached in every nerve; 
her head burned; the fire could not warm her feet. And 
the thoughts — always tracking, tracking across her brain 
— she felt as if she should go mad if they did not stop. 
It would not be any better if she went to bed — she could 
not sleep. And she must wait up for the servants, too. So 
she fought it out for nearly an hour, when she heard the 
door-bell ring. The servants were not in yet — she must an- 
swer it. There is an ignominy in having to answer your 
own door-bell. You are plunged into publicity nolens volens 
— no one, nothing, between you and the cold, profane, curi- 
ous eyes of the world. You must see who is standing on 
the outer side of your oak. 

Sarah opened the door with set teeth. “Well,” she said 
between them, “ what is it ? ” 

It was the substitute, and she almost let the lamp drop 
when he came out of the darkness within range of it. 

“ Oh ! ” she said. “ I could not imagine who would be com- 
ing at this hour. Is — is there anything I can do for you ? ” 
There had been so many things she couldn’t do for him for 
the past four days, one would have thought he would have 
hesitated before asking her if she could do another. But 
he was not the kind that hesitates to give trouble. He 
wanted a book, a volume of Wordsworth’s poems; it would 
be, he thought, the volume that had “ The Excursion ” in it. 
He had “ embodied ” a quotation from it in his next morn- 
ing’s lecture, which he wanted to verify; he always wanted 
to verify, it was a principle with him, etc. 

“ Heavens ! ” exclaimed Sarah, not asking him to come 
in; “I can’t look up the volume now, but I’ll find it and 
give it to you before the lecture to-morrow.” That would 
be too late, he said; it might take him an hour to find the 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


375 


line. Sarah acknowledged to herself that '' The Excursion '' 
was not the sort of poem to glance through in a moment for 
a forgotten line. 

I’ll look the volume up,” she said, and hand it to you 
after the early celebration to-morrow morning.” The lamp 
was in danger of being blown out, so she curtly bade him 
good-night, and he went away reluctantly; she heard him 
at the bottom of the steps saying something about “ The 
Wanderer,” but she shut the door and bolted it. 

It was a little distraction that she had to look for the 
volume; but it was not in the library, alas! And after a 
while it came to her that Leonora had had it in her room 
last summer, and that she remembered having seen it on 
the bookshelf there some time during the winter. Then she 
would have to go to Leonora’s room. There wasn’t any help 
for it ; the maid wasn’t here to send, and if she were, she’d 
never get the name right, and she’d have to go herself in 
the end. It was the last thing she wanted to do — but — she’d 
got to do it. So she set her teeth tight together and marched 
up the stairs and gave a quick tap at Leonora’s door. Leon- 
ora’s voice said something, she didn’t exactly know what, and 
she turned the knob and went in. 

Leonora was kneeling before her crucifix; she turned her 
head in Sarah’s direction, pointed to a chair by the fire, 
putting her finger on her lips, and then turned her head 
away. 

It made Sarah very angry and filled her with disgust; 
she could scarcely bring herself to sit down in the chair 
indicated. Leonora’s matter-of-fact way of treating her de- 
votions had always irritated her. She had always found it 
distinctly characteristic of Catholics. Fancy a girl in their 
communion not springing up from her knees and blushing 
and looking embarrassed if any one had come in! ^^Per- 
functory ” was the word that rose to her lips ; yes, perfunc- 
tory described such devotions. She had always, even in the 
first fervour of her friendship, lamented Leonora’s puerile 
attachment to her rosary; but to-night it irritated her be- 
yond measure to see that childish figment of piety lying on 
the table by the fire under the full light of the lamp. She 


376 


THE TENTS OP WICKEDNESS 


will never outgrow that folly, I suppose,” she reflected dur- 
ing the minute -and a half that she sat waiting. “ They 
have made her so — they have cramped her intellect, they 
have kept her a child! No doubt her whole moral nature 
is dwarfed. If she could only have married Paul Fairfax 
and got into a clearer atmosphere! — but it is hopeless, once 
that blight falls on a soul.” 

It’s so nice you came in,” said Leonora, not knowing 
about the blight on her soul, getting up from her knees and 
coming over to her. “ Like old times ! Doesn’t last summer 
seem like very old times — so long, long ago ? ” and she half 
sighed. She pulled a low chair across the room and sat 
down beside Sarah and leaned on the arm of her chair. 
Sarah looked down at her; she was really lovely, in a long 
white wrapper, the sleeves of which fell away from her arms. 
The fire perhaps had given her face the colour it had lacked 
of late, and her beautiful hazel eyes were full of feeling, 
and the firelight, again, was working marvels of gold on 
her brown hair. The silence did not seem unnatural to Leo- 
nora, who leaned against the arm of the chair and looked 
into the fire. 

“I was just making my Way of the Cross,” she said, 
leaning forward to put back a coal that had fallen. “ The 
church was so full this afternoon I couldn’t get to the 
Stations, and besides, it was growing dark so fast I was 
afraid Mrs. Warren would worry about me.” 

“ That reminds me,” said Sarah, aroused from her trance 
of admiration. “ The servants are out, and I had to come 
in myself to get a volume of Wordsworth that’s on that 
little bookshelf, isn’t it? I remember seeing it here one 
day this winter.” 

“ Yes, here it is,” said Leonora, going across the room 
and getting it. “And you didn’t come in just to see me, 
then ? I’d flattered myself you did ! ” 

“ Why, I suppose truth compels me to say I shouldn’t 
have come except for the book. That tiresome man they’ve 
sent to take the services doesn’t give me much time to do 
anything to please myself.” 

“ And would it have pleased you to come and have a talk 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 377 

with me to-night if you had had time ? ” , Leonora spoke in 
rather a low tone as she sat looking into the fire. 

Sarah was silent for a moment, and then said slowly, and 
with a hard ring in her voice: “Nothing gives me much 
pleasure these days.” 

“ What is the matter with these days, Sarah ? It hurts 
me to see you unhappy and not to know what makes you so. 
If you could only tell me just once, just the factsy nothing 
more — not your feelings — ^I might then be in sympathy with 
you, and not make you uncomfortable by saying the wrong 
thing all the time.” Sarah did not speak, and after a while 
Leonora went on : “ Sometimes I’ve wondered if you had 
thought it strange I didn’t talk to you of my trouble. But 
it is so hard to speak when it concerns — when it means — 
blaming — any one — ^near to you; I was sure you knew all 
the dreadful facts, and that the hideous papers had not left 
anything for me to say. And I reverenced your silence, all 
of you. To take in one so disgraced, and not to ask a ques- 
tion of her! It seemed to me the charity of saints. Per- 
haps I ought not to speak to you when your silence helped 
me so; but it seems different, somehow. You knew, and I 
don’t know! I just want you to tell me what is hanging 
over you all, and then I will be silent, I promise you I will.” 

“Nothing is gained by talking of one’s troubles,” re- 
turned Sarah in a bitter tone, rising to go away. Leonora 
threw her arms across the chair and pushed her back into it. 

“ Listen, Sarah. If you knew what this home had been 
to me, you would feel I had a right to know. This is the 
second time it has been a refuge to me in my dreadful 
trouble. It is the only place on earth, except the convent^ 
where I can turn for shelter. I love this room. I love it, 
with its pretty curtains and the sunshine and the fire! I 
love the very pattern of the carpet. When I’ve been away 
it has comforted me to think of it and of you all. And to 
know I had a refuge somewhere has helped me through 
some bad hours, some very bad hours since I went away, I 
can tell you that ! ” 

“ Well, then,” said Sarah bitterly, “ make the most of it 
while it lasts, for its days are numbered ! ” 


378 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


What do you mean ? ” said Leonora, startled. Do you 
mean you are going to move? I thought the rectory went 
with the parish ? You couldn’t get anything half so pretty.” 

Sarah turned abruptly toward her companion and fixed 
black, searching eyes upon her. Can you tell me honestly 
you don’t know anything about this? That you haven’t 
even a suspicion of what’s happened ? ” 

“ I ? On my honour, before Heaven, I don’t know a 
thing. I haven’t a suspicion of what you mean.” 

“ Edward is leaving the parish ; he hands in his resigna- 
tion on Easter Monday.” 

Oh ! ” exclaimed Leonora in a pained voice. Isn’t that 
a pity! Why, I thought he was doing so much good, and 
the people seem to adore him. I thought he would be here 
years and years perhaps. Isn’t change hateful! And your 
mother will feel it — the garden, everything you’d got in such 
nice order. I’m more sorry for your mother than anybody. 
I think she loves it best. Edward, I suppose, just thinks 
of his work; but your mother and you have naturally some 
interest in your house, and to have to make a new home 
every few years takes it out of you.” 

Sarah sat silent, gazing before her stonily. It seemed 
a trifle dramatic to Leonora that she should take it so to 
heart. She tried to be sympathetic, however, and after ex- 
pressing again her affection for the rectory, she said: 

“ But perhaps you’ll get a larger house, something 
grander. Only I hope it won’t be in a city. Of all cities, 
not in NTew York. I should be sorry to see my dear Mrs. 
Warren shut up in Hew York!” 

Sarah caught her breath, but did not speak. Her com- 
panion uneasily tried to say something in a lighter tone : 

“When she’s mistress of a bishop’s house, however, she 
may be reconciled to the loss of Comberford rectory and its 
garden. That will be a larger sphere for your energies, my 
dear. Edward is so clever he won’t stop till he gets to the 
top of the hill. You’ll be so important a woman I’ll have 
to take my turn in a long cue to get a half-hour’s inter- 
view with you, let alone ever being invited to stop a night 
with you in bishopdom ! ” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


379 


But she saw in a moment she had said something wrong; 
the colour flamed into Sarah’s face, and then she went very 
white. 

“We shall never live under Edward’s roof again,” she 
said huskily. “ Our paths divide.” 

“I don’t understand,” faltered Leonora, frightened at 
the emotion of her companion. 

“Edward’s giving up his parish is but the prelude to — 
to his placing his resignation of the ministry in his bishop’s 
hands.” 

This Sarah said steadily and slowly, each word dropping 
on Leonora’s ears with clear and separate force. 

Leonora sprang to her feet, her face white. “ It can’t 
be — oh — I won’t believe it of him. Edward — why, I thought 
he was so good ! I thought he was almost a saint — I thought 
he had such faith — his whole life seemed just for God.” 
There was a silence, and she went on after, in a broken 
voice : “ It was bad enough to hear of Mr. Davidge ; but a 
man like Edward — so fine a mind, with such great gifts — 
to turn against his God like that ” 

Sarah looked at her, startled, and then said in a steely 
voice : “ Edward hasn’t renounced his God. There is a fine 
line of distinction. But he has renounced the Church of 
his baptism, the Church in which God placed him; he has 
renounced the sacraments of which he has partaken and 
which he has administered to others ! He has renounced his 
ordination vows, to the fulfilment of which he was bound 
by every rule of honour and loyalty known to man.” Then, 
after a moment’s pause, she panted out rather than said: 
“ He is for ever degraded in my eyes. I shall never think 
of him again but as disgraced and branded with the stigma 
of a shameful treason. He has destroyed my faith in every 
one.” 

“ Sarah, don’t say such things ! ” 

“ Don’t say them ? Why shouldn’t I say them ? Has he 
spared me? Has he spared my mother? Hasn’t he broken 
her heart? Hasn’t he destroyed every illusion that I ever 
had? He should have been our protector, and he has aban- 
doned us. He should have kept up the tradition of my 


380 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


father’s honourable name, and it will be a name of reproach. 
We have lived for him, and he repays our devotion by leav- 
ing us — leaving us alone and uncared for — while he goes 
away with an unspeakable travesty of self-sacrifice to follow 
his convictions! His convictions! Convictions! I never 
want to hear the word again. It is but another name for 
the subtlest selfishness, an egotism that no words can paint 
the sting of, nor the sin of, nor the despair of! Once a 
man intrenches himself behind his convictions, you may save 
your words, you needn’t appeal to his heart, you needn’t hope 
to move him by the suffering he infiicts on others. He is 
deaf, he is turned to stone. An Indian mother slaughter- 
ing her child is an angel of mercy in comparison.” 

“Why do you say such things?” said Leonora, raising 
her head and looking at her. “ You know you will be sorry 
for them. You know they are not true.” She had been 
standing by the mantel, with her head bent down on it, 
while this first outburst came; now she had turned round 
and faced Sarah, pale, but with a steady look in her eyes. 
“ It would be as much as you could do to bear it,” she went 
on, “ if you took it in a Christian spirit. But taking it in 
the way you do, it will do you the worst sort of an injury, 
and it will kill your mother. For whatever this thing may 
be for you, it is ten times worse for her. A son is very 
different from a brother. You ought to be thinking of her 
and keeping her up, and instead of that you are stabbing 
her to the heart, every word you say — that is, if you say 
words like these that you’ve just said of Edward.” 

Sarah started to her feet. “ I was a fool,” she said, “ to 
have opened my lips about it to you! I might have known 
your sympathy would all be with him.” 

“ I don’t know why it should be with him,” she returned. 
“ I don’t know anything about the whole matter, but that 
he’s given up the Anglican ministry. My knowledge of you 
makes it clear to me that it pains you keenly, and I pity 
you with all my heart. It breaks up your home, and in 
that again no one can feel for you more than I, who have 
no home and who have looked upon you with envy ever since 
I came under the roof of yours.” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


381 


^^And you don’t know, you don’t even suspect, you are 
not logical enough to be sure what will be his next step, now 
he has broken with the Anglican Church and hasn’t turned 
agnostic? For a man of his school of churchmanship you 
have no suspicion — oh, not the faintest suspicion ! — ^where he 
naturally would gravitate ? ” 

There was something insolent in Sarah’s voice and man- 
ner, and her eyes were fixed on Leonora’s face with an 
offensive scrutiny. The latter flushed and said: 

I don’t know anything about your schools of church- 
manship. I have never thought of Edward’s leaving the 
Church in which he was brought up. I have not speculated 
about his tendencies, as you call them. When you first told 
me he had renounced the ministry, I thought it meant that 
he had turned against God, as that — that other man did 
whom I despise. And now, from the taunting way in which 
you speak to me, I suppose you mean me to understand — 
or rather, that you think that I ought to have understood 
— that Edward has made up his mind to enter the Catholic 
Church. Is that what you mean me to understand ? ” 

Yes,” said Sarah with an incisive brevity, That is 
just what I mean you to understand.” 

There was a long silence ; the two stood on the rug before 
the fire, one gazing into it, the other with her eyes fixed 
searchingly on her companion’s face. 

“ And can you tell me that you are not glad ? ” she said 
at last. 

Leonora lifted her eyes after a moment; they were filled 
with tears, and she said in an unsteady voice: ‘^1 can tell 
you that I am not glad. By-and-by I know I shall be glad. 
But I am not now, when I think about — ^your mother — 
whom I love ” 


25 


CHAPTEK V 


O N Holy Saturday, about dusk, Edward came back. 

His substitute was waiting for him in the library, 
where the lamps were just lighted. He put down 
his bag in the hall and went in. The man of minutia had 
come with a thousand questions to ask about the morrow; 
it was an hour before he got them asked and answered; he 
went down the steps with many perplexities tugging at each 
other in his not capacious brain. The one clear thing that 
he had brought out of the interview was that he was charged 
with all the services. The rector himself would preach at 
the eleven o’clock service; that was all that he was able to 
do; everything else the substitute himself must undertake. 

That night, about eleven o’clock, Edward came into the 
library where his mother was sitting alone. The house was 
quiet — the servants had gone to bed, Sarah was in her room 
and Leonora was in hers. He leaned against the mantel- 
piece, and said: 

“I’ve been to your room; I thought you had gone up- 
stairs.” 

“ No,” she said, not looking up, folding her work together 
to put it away. “ I waited for thee. I thought thee might 
want to see me.” 

“ Yes, I do, mother. There is a good deal I want to say, 

and I mayn’t have another chance ” 

“ Thee’ll go away next week ? ” 

“ On Tuesday in the early train.” There was a long 
silence. “ There are a good many things I’ve got to leave 
for you and Sarah to do,” he resumed at last. “ I’m sorry 
enough to put it on you. If you could only get Sarah to 
consent to stay here for a couple of months longer, while 
you’ve a right to the house.” 

382 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


383 


“But I can’t,” said his mother. “Thee knows what 
Sarah is when she’s made up her mind to a thing, and she’s 
made up her mind not to stay here an hour longer than she 
can help.” 

“ Poor Sarah ! ” said her brother, and fell into silence 
again, from which he roused himself to say : “ Don’t let her 
pack the books, she will wear herself out. Have a man in 
to do it. I will write you where to send them in a week — 
maybe even in a day or two. And my papers — I’ve gone 
hurriedly through them. Those I haven’t burned I’ve put 
into a box, and it can go to the same address as the books. 
I’ve packed what I wanted of my clothes in a trunk. The 
others — Sarah will know some one to give them to. I don’t 
know anything else about matters here at the house. I saw 
Buckley on Wednesday and made over all the estate papers 
to him. Being joint trustee with me, he knows as much 
about the investments as I do; we’ve always consulted to- 
gether about them; I could not do any better with him than 
he can do alone. He was father’s most trusted friend. I 
have implicit confidence in his judgment and in his honour.” 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Warren faintly. “Thee knows I 
have, too.” 

“ It has made me more satisfied, knowing you feel as I 
do about him. And there is another thing I did — another 
arrangement I made — I mean — something — Buckley will ex- 
plain to you the particulars. But,” with an effort, “ I might 
as well say, I made over my interest in the estate to you, 
totally. It will be yours to dispose of by will. Whether, if 
Sarah survives you, you will think best to leave it to her 
outright or only in trust, with the power to dispose of it 
by will, or only to leave it to her for her life, you will judge. 
You can talk it over with Buckley. He will come out here 
any day, he says. And I should think you’d do well to 
arrange it all at once. It was always father’s rule, and it 
has always been mine, to have money matters sharply set- 
tled and in good shape, and with as little delay as possible, 
when there has arisen necessity for a change.” 

“ Why did thee do this ? ” said his mother, trying to con- 
trol her voice. “ I want thee to keep what’s thine. It would 


384 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


make me unhappy. Thy father would not wish me to 
take it.” 

“It’s all done, mother; don’t make any difficulty about 
it. Buckley and I have agreed that it is best.” 

“ But if thee should need it ? ” 

“I am not going to need it, and what would there be 
to prevent my letting you know if I did need it? The only 
thing I will take is, each year for the next three or four, 
six or seven hundred dollars annually. I will draw on the 
estate for that sum or less — probably less, never more. So 
base your estimate of income, deducting that.” He walked 
two or three times up and down the room; he tried more 
than once to speak, but the words did not come. At last, 
stopping before the mantelpiece, with his back turned toward 
her, he said, with an effort that made his voice unnatural: 

“I suppose my father would think I had betrayed the 
confidence he placed in me. For he put the care of you and 
of Sarah in my hands, and I am leaving you.” 

“ Thy father would not think thee had {)etrayed the trust 
he put in thee,” she said, the mother in her stung at sight 
of his emotion, and fired in his defence. “ There was no 
man who had a stronger sense of a person’s right, of a per- 
son’s responsibility, than thy father. He claimed it for him- 
self, he upheld it for others ; he would have given it to thee.” 

“Ho son ever had better parents,” he said, huskily, after 
a moment. 

“And no parents ever had a better son,” she an- 
swered, lifting her head for an instant and looking at him 
with unspeakable yearning. But he did not turn toward 
her. 

“ One must not take a mother’s verdict,” he returned 
slowly after a while. “ Though it comforts me to have you 
say it, when you are perhaps the only one who could say it 
now, meaning it.” There was a long silence. “ It shows 
what our relations to each other are, doesn’t it,” he went 
on at last, “ that though I have never talked to you about — 
about the conflict that has been going on in my mind these 
last four years, I have now a feeling that I have little to 
explain, that you know what I have gone through, that you 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


385 


were prepared for what I had to tell you in that hurried 
half-hour before I went away on Saturday ? ” 

She gave a gesture of assent. 

“You know the spiritual part of me,” he went on; “you 
know my mental attitude, the way things look to me. I 
needn’t try to tell you; I feel it must be as clear to you as 
it is to me.” 

“ It is clear to me,” she said slowly, “ clear for these last 
three years. Before that, when thee first took this parish, 
I thought thee was happy — for a year — yes, for a full year. 
After that, for these three years, I have known — thee was — 
troubled ” 

“ It began that first year,” he said, standing with his 
elbows on the mantelpiece and his head resting on his hands, 
not turning toward her as he spoke, speaking rather to him- 
self for the moment than to her. “ It was like a cloud, no 
bigger than a man’s hand. Sometimes it would disappear — 
then after a time it would reappear, larger and more threat- 
ening — but would pass away again, and the sky would be 
serene and blue, and I thought of myself with contempt 
and self-reproach — only to have fancied that it was any- 
thing but a drifting mass of vapours, to be blown away by 
the first good, strong, honest wind out of the north. But 
toward the end of that year — it was about the anniversary 
of my ordination day — it came again — it crept slowly up 
the sky, slowly, slowly — darkening everything — making all 
the rest of the sky unnatural — the very light itself had a 
look that I had never seen before — and gradually — gradu- 
ally — it shrouded everything ” 

There was a long silence; the tall clock in the corner 
ticked monotonously, the coal in the grate broke into pieces 
and sent out a glow, and faded down. 

“Was there — has there ever been — any one — who — 
who — ” she faltered. 

“ Any one who influenced me ? — to whom I can trace any 
bent — one way or the other — any jar, any rupture in my 
creed ? I know what you mean : ‘ Let me fall into the hands 
of God. Let me not fall into the hands of man.’ There was 
no man, mother. No human voice spoke to me, no human 


386 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


mind controlled my choice. We have fallen into the hands 
of God. It is for Him now to show us mercy.” After a 
moment he went on : Maybe I have done unwisely, but 

from first to last I have fought my battle alone. But I 
could never have spoken to any human being, have asked 
counsel of any one living, have sought pity or sympathy of 
any friend without outraging that Something within me 
that was all the stay I had. I have that fealty to — to — the 
Holy Spirit — a faith that I learned from you, mother — 
that is an inheritance from my Quaker ancestors. If I 
had spoken a word — if I had broken the silence, I should 
have lost the presence of which, even in the darkest moments, 
I was conscious. It was all I had to stay myself upon. God 
knows it seemed little enough and vague enough ; you could 
not call it comfort, you could not call it strength — it was 
just not annihilation, it was just not abandonment. I felt 
some one was there; I trusted something would uphold me 
in the worst strait — I was not alone. That was all I knew.” 

He lifted up his head and passed his hand across his 
forehead. “ When the dismemberment of my past creed 
began,” he went on, “I refused to credit myself. I said to 
myself I was a traitor. I grew to loathe and sicken at the 
disloyal thoughts that filled my mind. I said over and over 
to myself, I will be calm, I will be patient; righteous judg- 
ment is not judged offhand; time will show me what to do. 
Truth is worth waiting for, even to gray hairs. I threw 
myself into my work and worked with all the strength I 
had, and tried that way to crowd out the doubts that kept 
clamouring in my ears. At last I set myself to investigate 
the accusations which my mind forced on me. I was loyal. 
I had prejudged nothing. I refused to hear any cause made 
out against the Church to which I had given my allegiance. 
For two whole years I read nothing on the other side. I 
went over everything, from my seminary text-books up ; and 
out of her own mouth I judged her. And the stronger my 
convictions grew against her logical claims, her historical 
claims, her actual authority, the deeper, the more pathetic 
grew my pity and cleaving to her. All my life I had had a 
strong attraction toward the Catholic Church. That year 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


387 


we were abroad, every hour I could call my own I spent in 
her cathedrals. From my boyhood the lives of her ancient 
saints, the stray stories of her missionary labours, had fired 
my enthusiasm. I had a fond belief that those glorious 
annals belonged to us as well as to her. When at the end 
of those two years I had to give up that belief and acknowl- 
edge to myself that I had no more claim to them than any 
other heretic, I turned bitter. As my convictions of her 
claims grew strong, my attraction toward her grew less. 
And for this last year I would have given anything, mother, 
anything to have found a flaw in her, to have been able to 
say to myself, this magnificent pile stands on ground that 
is sinking slowly but surely away; at any moment it may 
be plunged into annihilation. This giant of the ages is 
but mortal, and you and I may see its dissolution. This 
mother of virgins is but a wretched harlot, and you and I 
may live to see her shame exposed. 

I have tried to make covenants with God. I have 
promised Him the sternest service that any follower ever 
gave a master. I would stop at nothing, I would rival the 
saints and martyrs of all time in my devotion if He would 
only let me stay where, by His will, I had been placed — 
where in good faith I had consecrated myself to Him, and 
where my heart seemed fixed by ties of nature. I pleaded 
with Him to spare my soul this upheaval, to spare my poor 
flock, who would be scattered and estranged by the scandal 
of my defection and — and more than all — to spare — you — 
mother — you who ” 

He paused abruptly and walked restlessly up and down 
the room several times. Once he stopped and took up a 
paper-knife from the table and seemed to examine it crit- 
ically, and laid it down, not knowing he had touched it. 
He tried more than once to go on with the sentence that he 
had begun, but the words did not come. 

His mother sat, bending a little forward, leaning on the 
arm of the chair, her eyes on the ground, her quick breath- 
ing the only sign of her emotion. She and her son were 
deeply, intimately alike; there were few of his characteris- 
tics that he did not inherit from her, foremost among which 


388 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


was his unconquerable reserve. It was scarcely anything 
short of a life-and-death question that would break it down 
and make it possible for him to speak of himself even to her. 
The difference between them was, he had the gift of words 
when he forced himself to speak, while she, with the same 
keenness of intuition, the same deep spirituality, was dumb, 
even in the face of life-and-death questions. She remem- 
bered as epochs the few times in all his life that he had 
ever really spoken of himself to her — when he was con- 
firmed — when he first went away to college — the night before 
his ordination — the day of his father’s death. She had 
known him through and through, his life had lain open 
before her. She knew his past, she felt his present; she 
looked into his future. But it was not by his speech, nor by 
hers, that she acquired the knowledge; it was by a faculty 
more unerring. And now, to-night, when he paused, strug- 
gling with that broken sentence, she longed to tell him not 
to speak, not to tell her what it was Jo him to leave her — 
not to say the words. She knew what he wanted to say ; she 
knew what it would cost him to say it; why should he add 
that one pang more to his rupture with the past? 

This was a solemn hour. It was virtually the last that 
they would spend alone together. He would go away in the 
early morning on Tuesday; they both knew that it would 
be for ever — a lifelong parting from her and from his sister 
and from his home with them; from any home, in fact. 
She had not needed to be told in that hurried half-hour on 
Saturday that he was going forth in answer to a summons 
so august that awe almost overpowered amazement at the 
choice. 

This was the last hour that they should spend together 
on earth — yes, the last. It was strange to be dying so before 
death! INatural death comes with gradual steps, with a 
loosening of this or that, with a weariness, with a decay, 
with a threatening of worse if one demands to live; with a 
promise of better once the debt is paid. But this — it was 
like seeing a resplendent angel at midday in a busy street, 
among the most commonplace surroundings. It was so out 
of nature, so wilful, so against all ordinary laws of human 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


389 


duty, an anguish so unwarrantable in almost any view one 
took of it. So — unnecessary — as poor Sarah had said in her 
bitterness. She knew she should live — she knew he would 
live, many years perhaps. There was nothing to die about 
in such crises as these. One lived, but lived dead, so to 
speak. She did not blame him, any more than he blamed 
himself. She knew it was inevitable; she would have been 
the last to ask him to consider her. “ He that loveth father 
or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.” He was 
worthy; he had been called and he had risen up to go. 
Those last words — why should he speak them? They would 
have been her most precious memory all the rest of her 
life; but they would cost him such poignant pain. 

She staggered to her feet. It is late,” she said. Thee 
must have rest — thee^s got to preach to-morrow — ^we won^t 
talk any more about it — ever.” Her face worked for a 
moment, then she said : “ Remember always, I’m glad — 
I’m glad thee answered ^ Yes ’ when God called to thee to 
come ” 

She put out her arms to him; they clasped each other 
in a close embrace for a moment, then she said something 
that sounded like good-night and went out of the room, 
leaving him alone. 


CHAPTEE VI 


T hat year Easter came as late as it could come. The 
spring was well advanced and the day was sweet and 
soft, hazy, but with now and again some sunshine. 
At the eleven o’clock service the church was very full. There 
was disappointment when only the remplagant appeared in 
the chancel and when he alone read the service in monoto- 
nous tones which almost damped the choir, who were in 
rather good voice that day. There was a strong feeling that 
the rector must be ill indeed to fail them at Easter. But 
when the choir ceased its efforts, the substitute, instead of 
going out into the vestry-room went ncross the chancel and 
sat down in one of the stalls facing the pulpit, and looked 
with stolid expectation toward it. There was a hush, and 
every eye was turned to the door of the vestry-room, which 
in a moment opened and their young rector came out. A 
man is undoubtedly young at thirty-four; he did not look 
young though, notwithstanding he was clean-shaven and 
slender. And when he lifted his eyes and looked across the 
sea of faces before him there was a vague feeling among 
the elders of the flock that he could teach them, even them, 
something that they didn’t know. “ You may do what you 
like, mankind will believe no one but God, and he only can 
persuade mankind who believes that God has spoken to him.” 

What was that sermon, that long-remembered sermon 
about? It was not an Easter sermon particularly. There 
was nothing about the rolled-away stone and the empty 
tomb. There was nothing about consolation for those who 
mourn their dead; there was not any allusion to the resur- 
rection of the body. There was no dogma, no doctrine, 
so to speak. Very few people could remember what the 

390 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


391 


text was, if there were a text; the majority agreed it must 
have been part of that verse about “ What shall a man 
give in exchange for his soul ? It was not about your re- 
sponsibility for your brother’s soul, but about your respon- 
sibility for your own soul. Yours, intimately yours, and no 
one else’s. It brought you face to face with God; it stung 
you with self -contempt, it divided with a swift hand your 
low aims from God’s eternal will for you. It showed you 
grovelling in the rubbish-heap of time, not lifting yourself 
up for long enough to claim your right to become a son of 
God — choosing — choosing the base and throwing away the 
good. It painted the perfunctory service of the ordinary 
Christian. The prayers all honeycombed with worldly 
thoughts, the grudging alms, the mixed motives, the waver- 
ing fidelity, and then, in contrast, the undivided heart of 
Mammon’s children, the straightforward route, the direct 
aim, the sure success — their wisdom in their generation as 
contrasted with the wisdom of the children of light. The 
vocation of the children of light, the portion of the sons 
of God; that was the call of his heart to their hearts. The 
words — nobody could ever remember the words ; but the 
persuaded persuade, as the indulgent disarm.” 

When he suddenly ended and left the pulpit and dis- 
appeared into the vestry-room, there was so absolute a hush 
that the voice of the clergyman, reading the verses of the 
offertory, came as a sort of shock. 

The dispersing of the congregation was generally at- 
tended by many greetings, much neighbourly talk, but to-day 
people went out silently, avoiding rather than seeking each 
other. The Benthorps’ wagonette had brought a number of 
the Easter house-party to the church. Amy, looking rather 
pale, refused to drive back and declined companionship in 
her walk home; she had a poor family to see on the way. 
Her father had meant to go to the rectory after service, but 
somehow he did not go, and walked back alone by the river. 
Neither did any one else go to ask about the rector’s health, 
as they had meant. Somehow it didn’t seem the right 
moment, a vague feeling kept them back, a certain sense of 
impropriety which they did not attempt to define to them- 


392 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


selves. It would have been like tackling an archangel after 
he had brought you a message — ^you couldn’t do it, and so 
nobody did it; even the substitute went away to the house 
where he was stopping, with his list in his pocket and a 
strange sort of questioning stirring in his soul instead. 

On Monday morning there was the annual vestry-meet- 
ing at ten. Leonora, watching behind the curtains in her 
room, saw Edward, with firm step and white face, cross the 
lawn and go to the church. At eleven she saw him come 
back, and by-and-by saw the men of the parish, in deep 
consultation one with another, slowly come out and go their 
various ways. All the afternoon there were tradespeople 
coming and going into the rector’s study, builders and me- 
chanics with bills to be audited, societies and guilds to pre- 
sent their reports — a fiery furnace of material frets. Leo- 
nora could only guess at it all. She knew he had given in 
his resignation, but she could not tell whether he had offered 
any reason for doing it. 

The house was all in confusion, for at twelve o’clock the 
men ordered by Sarah had come; they were to bring down 
trunks, to pack furniture, to take away carpets to be cleaned. 
You could not walk across the hall without stumbling over 
a kit of carpenter’s tools or a heap of dethroned pictures 
waiting to be boxed. You would have thought there was 
some awful life-and-death necessity for getting out of the 
house at once. It added a hideous discord, material and 
intangible both, to the real and inevitable tragedy of the 
breaking up of the home. Sarah, with set face and quick 
movements, directed the work, and directed it well. Mo 
doubt it was a relief to her; what it was to her mother and 
to Edward it would not be difficult to fancy. It seemed like 
having a chattel sale the day of a death, instead of waiting 
decently till the funeral was over. 

The dining-room was cold from the draughts that had 
swept through it while the men were moving out a side- 
board that had to be taken to pieces to be boxed. The dis- 
lodged china stood in piles on the floor. Sarah ruthlessly or- 
dered the barrels, in which it was to be packed, to be brought 
in. The poor little maid, with wonder and distress painted 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


393 


on lier face, tried to follow the directions given her and at the 
same time proceed with the preparations for the two o’clock 
dinner. Sarah seemed purposely every few minutes to call 
her away from this last duty. It was past two o’clock. The 
cook came to the door and sharply told the maid that din- 
ner was ready and would be spoiled. Sarah sent the cook 
away and ordered the dinner kept hot, and employed the 
maid for twenty minutes longer. 

When the dinner at last was served it was overdone, and 
the cook’s temper was overdone and the maid was weeping. 
The family did not respond promptly to the summons: 
Sarah had gone upstairs to show the men what to do there; 
Leonora was the only one who came down, shortly followed 
by Mrs. Warren. 

“ Wouldn’t it be better,” Leonora said to her as she 
caught the start she gave on entering the dismantled room, 
“wouldn’t it be better to send Edward’s dinner to the 
study ? ” The maid eagerly set to work to do this ; but 
when Sarah came back she looked as if she thought it quite 
unnecessary. The meal naturally was not cheerful. The 
room was cold and, the curtains having been taken down, 
there was a glare. Sarah bethought herself of something 
she had to tell a workman when the feast was half over, 
and while she was away Leonora said: 

“Let us go up and have our dessert in your room; it 
will be nice and warm there,” and they went, Leonora carry- 
ing one tray and the maid another. She made the fire blaze 
and drew a big chair near it, and then pulled the curtains 
a little closer that there should be no glare. “ So much nicer 
than being downstairs in all that clatter,” she said, putting 
a shawl on Mrs. Warren’s shoulders. 

And so the day passed, and at tea Leonora saw to it 
that Edward was served in his study and that Mrs. Warren 
had her meal in her room. It seemed to annoy Sarah when 
she came to the table to find it prepared only for herself and 
Leonora, and she asked the maid what it meant. The maid 
stammered something about Miss Hungerford telling her to 
take Mrs. Warren’s tea up to her room. 

“ Is she ill ? ” she asked Leonora quickly. 


394 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


No, but she’s tired, and I suppose a little upset.” 

Naturally,” returned Sarah. “ WTio isn’t?” 

The good Easter weather spent itself by Monday night, 
when a heavy rain set in, chill as February, with some wind 
and a persistent downpour. The shutters perhaps had not 
been fastened by the tired servants when they went to bed; 
at intervals all night they banged shut or burst open. The 
fires had been neglected probably; there was an unspeakable 
feeling of cold in the house from whatever cause. No one 
but the servants slept very much, it is safe to say. 

Sarah came downstairs in the early dawn of Tuesday 
and found the cook struggling with the kitchen fire. Ed- 
ward was to go away at six, and it was nearly that now. 
Before the fire had ignited and the few cold things had 
been scrambled together for him on a tray and carried into 
the dining-room, Edward came down. The boy for his bag 
rang the bell at the same moment. J^dward gave it to him 
at the door, and meeting Sarah as he turned back into the 
hall, he said: 

“ Oh, no matter about breakfast. I couldn’t eat any- 
thing; don’t bother.” 

His face was the colour of ashes and his voice was husky. 
He had his overcoat on, and he looked about for his hat, 
and took it down from the peg where it always hung and 
put it on blindly, as if he did not know what he did exactly. 

Good-bye,” he said, taking a step toward her, good- 
bye.” 

She moved almost imperceptibly a little back. 

‘‘ Why do you do this thing ? ” she said between her teeth. 

God knows ! ” he returned hoarsely, stretching out his 
arms toward her. 

She put her hands quickly behind her. 

DonH talk about God!” she almost hissed. 

His arms dropped at his side; he turned quickly and put 
down his head and went out of the door, leaving it open, 
and down the steps and along the path toward the gate, the 
wind and the rain beating remorselessly on him and tearing 
at the long cape of his coat as he strode out into the road, 
never once looking back. Sarah stood in the door, watching 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


395 


him as long as she could see him, then she shut it and 
turned back into the house. She paused again at the win- 
dow and gazed out into the storm ; but he was gone. 

“ I hope God will forgive him,” she said to herself, for 
all that he has made us suffer 


CHAPTER VII 


T he days did not grow better as the week wore on. 
The bouse was practically dismantled by Friday, but 
tbe dusting and packing of books, tbe boxing of fur- 
niture, tbe assorting of linen, of cbina, of bric-a-brac seemed 
endless. 

Sarab bad gone up to tbe attic. There were three old 
trunks there full of her father’s law-papers and decisions 
that had been packed away, years before, when every stroke 
of bis pen bad seemed to bis family a treasure beyond price. 
She stood for a few minutes looking at the three trunks 
critically; she was bolding a cloak around her with one 
band, for the attic was very cold, and with the other was 
holding aloft a candle, for the attic was also very dark. 
There is nothing that reduces sentiment like storage. A 
few days of pulling a house to pieces levels fictitious values 
amazingly. 

They are no longer worth house room,” she said to 
herself; “but I suppose I must speak to mother about it.” 

There was not a moment that she was not tingling with 
a feeling of resentment against her brother: the more tired 
she got, the more bitter she grew. She set down the candle 
in a safe corner where it would not blow out, and pulling 
her cloak around her, went painfully down the narrow and 
abominable stairs. One took one’s life in one’s hands mak- 
ing that descent — or rather, perhaps, one’s legs. She slipped 
once quite badly; that set her nerves ajar, though she did 
not fall. By the time she got to her mother’s room they 
were quite on edge. She tapped sharply and entered 
abruptly. It always gave her pain to see her mother now, 
looking so white and aged, and she had a sort of resent- 

396 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


397 


ment about ber silence and about her passive suffering. 
Probably she would have resented it more if her mother had 
spoken and said a thousandth part of what she felt; but, of 
course, that had never occurred to her. “ If mother would 
not give up so,” she was always saying to herself. “ If she 
would interest hei-self in something, do something to help 
me with all this load upon me, think of something besides 
her own trouble!” She distinctly felt herself injured by 
this, and when she entered the room to ask what she should 
do about the three trunks upstairs, she felt even more in- 
jured at the sight of her mother sitting by the fire with the 
“ Imitation ” and her Bible lying on her lap, her eyes fixed 
on the fire, and a look of wan and wearied desolation in her 
whole attitude. “ She should rouse herself ; she should think 
of me; it is rank injustice!” and her tone was in accord- 
ance with these thoughts. 

I came to ask you what’s to be done with all those old 
trunks of father’s, full of law-papers and briefs and decisions 
and things. There are three great trunks full of them, 
fearfully heavy. I don’t know how they ever got them up 
those horrid narrow stairs.” 

“ Oh, perhaps it wouldn’t be so difficult getting them 
down,” said her mother uneasily, as she turned toward her. 
“ I — I shouldn’t think it would.” She seemed to Sarah to 
have been so very far away in her thoughts that she scarcely 
knew what the question was. 

Well, I’m quite sure it would be difficult. I’ve just 
been near having a bad fall myself, coming down with noth- 
ing in my hands. I only wonder that I didn’t break my 
neck — but that’s neither here nor there. I don’t think, 
mother, those papers are worth keeping.” 

A flush came into Mrs. Warren’s face; she was listening 
then. 

Perhaps not all of them. But I’m not — quite — equal — 
to going through them all now. Some time later I can do it.” 

I can’t see what’s the use of keeping them at all, mother, 
if you’ll let me say so. They’re a great encumbrance; the 
storage will cost a lot; and to keep them on from year to 
year — for perhaps we’ll never have a house of our own again 
26 


398 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


— seems to me an unjustifiable, a perfectly unjustifiable piece 
of extravagance.” There was a pause. “It’s nothing but 
sentiment, for they’re no use to any one. And we’re not in 
a position to indulge in sentiment these days, you must see. 
If Edward had carried out his plan of writing a memoir of 
father it would have been another thing. There would have 
been sense as well as sentiment in keeping them for refer- 
ence — or — or — if father had had grandsons — any one to take 
his place, to carry on his professional traditions — one could 
see the wisdom of keeping every line he ever wrote, every suit 
he ever defended, every decision he ever rendered. But there 
is no one to follow him. We have come to an end — you 
must see that. Those trunks full of papers that would have 
been priceless to his descendants, will, having no descend- 
ants, be worth just so much per pound as waste paper in 
the junk-shops.” 

Mrs. Warren shrank back as if she had been struck a 
blow. Her sweet, white skin flushed, and then the flush died 
away, but she did not speak. Sarah waited for a moment or 
two, and then turned toward the window, drumming on it a 
moment or two more while she looked out, seeing nothing. 

“ If you’ll tell me what to do about them. I’ll do it,” she 
said crisply, turning hack toward the fire. “ I don’t com- 
plain of necessary work, but I do feel that unnecessary com- 
plications just at this time ought to be avoided on all ac- 
counts. We haven’t the money to waste in storing things 
indefinitely, and we haven’t the time to lose in looking over 
such a mass of material as that. And as to strength, I 
don’t think either you or I have much to throw away on 
sentiment. If we can live through what lies before us, it is 
as much as we can expect to accomplish.” 

Sarah had the gift of words, hot, burning coals of words 
at that. The heart on which she cast them suffered a little 
more, it is true, but what did it matter? After a certain 
point human nature refuses to feel, or at least to take 
account of what it feels. A sensation swept over the mother 
of complete desolation, of a wiping-out of all her past. She 
had not thought there was anything left to wipe out; but 
it seemed there must have been something that hadn’t gone 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


399 


•under, some floating wreckage to whick she would have tried 
to cling, perhaps, a little later, and wreckage doesn’t hold. 
It was best as it was; when there was nothing left to lose, 
nothing could be lost. 

“ Perhaps thee’s right,” she said faintly ; “ thee can do 
what thee wishes with them.” 

This irritated Sarah ; she felt her mother was doing what 
in her mind she characterised as “ the martyr act.” It 
isn’t for me to judge what’s right to do about them,” she 
said. “ I shall only do with them what you wish me to do, 
only that.” 

“ Then I wish thee to burn them,” said Mrs. Warren 
very low. “ Don’t let them be scattered or lost. See that 
they are all burned.” 

And that night Sarah sat up till midnight and burned 
them, and their smoke went up to heaven. 


CHAPTER VIII 


A t first Leonora had thought she ought to go away. 
She could do so little to protect Mrs. Warren, and 
not much to help Sarah in her self-imposed task of 
tearing to pieces in a few days the home of years. Mrs. 
Warren literally did nothing, and scarcely left her room. 
All her strength went to keeping herself from breaking 
down. She would sit by* the fire in her room hours at a 
time with her hands idle in her lap, a book unopened on the 
table by her side, her once busy knitting-needles lying near 
her. Sarah had thrust a trunk or two into the room, but 
there seemed no headway made in any packing. Leonora 
came and went two or three times in the course of the day 
to see if she could be of any use to her; but beyond seeing 
that her meals were brought to her comfortably there was 
nothing to do. One day she happened to come into the 
room in her walking-dress. 

Thee’s not going away ? ” she asked, looking up startled. 
Why, no ; not unless you send me,’’ said Leonora. 

Don’t go — I should be lonely if thee had to go ” 

After that there was no question of her going, and she 
put on a big white apron and carried things up and down 
the stairs for Sarah, and dusted books that Sarah handed 
to her from high shelves, and wrote labels and wrote lists 
and wrote letters for her, too. The intercourse between them 
was rather perfunctory; neither talked of anything but the 
business in hand. Leonora knew, however, that she was do- 
ing something, if not much, to get the blessed business over 
and to keep her beloved saint upstairs out of the sight of the 
turmoil, if not out of the noise of it. 

And that beloved saint, how passed the long days and 
400 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


401 


the still nights with her? She seemed to herself to pass 
them in dying, in dying to her past ideas of duty, to her 
past relations toward God, toward her own soul, toward the 
goal which she had thought was looming up close before her. 
Her life had been so out of the world, she had perhaps on 
that account mistaken it for a meritorious one. Is it any 
merit to avoid that which is repugnant to you? She had 
lived for her husband, for her children; she had, when she 
stopped to think about it, perhaps considered herself un- 
selfish. Is it ever unselfish to live for yourself? For they 
were herself, so intimate a part of herself that separation 
from them seemed death, extinction, disintegration of hopes, 
fears, instincts, aims — annihilation. Was there anything 
but the voice of nature in the love she had for them? Ani- 
mals love their young, birds are true to their mates. Where- 
in did she do violence to herself in serving hers? What in 
all the round of her affections was supernatural? If what 
God required of us was detachment, had she complied in 
any sense with His requirement? If it meant detachment 
from riches and the pleasures of the world and earthly am- 
bitions of one kind or another, she had complied with it; 
but if it meant being tied, bound, strapped with cords to 
earth, one could be that without the help of avarice or am- 
bition. “ He that loveth father or mother more than Me is 
not worthy of Me.” That one living line of Holy Writ, what 
more did she require to condemn her? 

She wandered about her room; every article of its furni- 
ture seemed to refute her claim to detachment. The great 
mahogany bed that she remembered from her earliest child- 
hood — she had had to be lifted up to it to get her mother’s 
morning kiss; her husband’s desk, his favourite chair; the 
work-table at which she always sat with her sewing while 
Edward thumbed over his alphabet or climbed into her lap; 
Sarah’s little bench in the corner; everything, even to the 
rugs on the floor and the candlesticks on the mantel-shelf, 
were parts of her past, and of a past that still seemed to 
hold her in a vice. The polish of the mahogany below in 
the dining-room, the glitter of the old silver on the side- 
board, the linen that she cherished, why — she had loved 


402 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


them. The order, the economy, the thrift that her brain 
had devised and that had produced the comfort, the peace, 
the well-being of her household — all these were her choice. 
INo doubt it was a better choice than the opposites of them. 
But were they worthy of the time, of the brain, of the heart 
that she had put into them? 

She would push her chair into the window and sit and 
gaze for hours across the lawn to the church gate and to 
the gray walls beyond. There were birds building their 
nests in the vines on the church wall and in the hedge that 
separated the churchyard from the lawn. Occasionally one 
of Sarah’s workmen would come hurrying across the church- 
yard, letting the gate slam and latch itself as he passed 
through. A pain would contract her face at the sound. 
How many hundreds of times she had heard the latch fall 
and had known that Edward was coming to the house from 
his room in the tower! It stabbed her to the heart to hear 
it now; she longed to ask Leonora to tie up the latch that 
she might not hear it ever again; but she never did ask her, 
of course. The path that his steps had worn was still dis- 
tinct, but the edges of it were greening a little, and if the 
house were unoccupied for a couple of months it would be 
all grown over. She looked across at the little window in 
the tower where he went to escape from interruption. It 
was an instinct every time she looked over there to wonder 
if the fire in the little grate had died down; if the room 
were not growing chilly. Solicitude for him — ah, that must 
die, too, die utterly! There would never be a possibility of 
her warding off anything from him ever again ; anxiety had 
better die to-day, to-night. She could never again stand 
between him and fret, misinterpretation, interruption, fa- 
tigue, disease. He would never know the shield she had 
been to him, for she had kept a silent guard. But she — she 
knew. And that taken away, what had she to do ? She had 
lived his life, she had borne his burdens, she had hoped his 
hopes, she had thrilled with his successes, she had mourned 
when he failed, she had agonised when he suffered. It was 
all so vacant now, looking ahead. It was not even as if she 
could live upon the hope of hearing news from him often. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


403 


for she knew she should rarely have a word from him — 
months perhaps between the times she heard. Nor as if she 
should be called to him if he were dying. Nor as if he 
could come to her if she were dying. Seas would be rolling 
between them probably long before that time came; he had 
accepted it, she had acquiesced in it. There was nothing 
for her but to look it squarely in the face and arrange to 
live as if he were dead. 

It would have been so much easier to have been really 
dead; flesh as well as spirit — so much simpler. She looked 
forward into her future divested of him. She saw it plainly, 
as concentrated, silent people often see things. She had 
been cut ofl from the child who had always been her joy; 
she was doomed to be chained to the child who had always 
been her duty. She had loved them both, but not equally. 
A wandering life shared with the one who was discordant, 
absolutely sundered from the one with whom, up to a cer- 
tain point, her sympathy was perfect. There would be no 
home — only tents to be pitched from year to year, or perhaps 
from month to month. Crude theories, daring experiments 
would result to Sarah from this first bitter disappointment. 
She had taken it wrong; it would do her vital harm. And 
her mother could only look on and be silent while the poison 
flowered and bore fruit before her eyes. 

Up to a certain point, as has been said, her sympathy 
with her son had been perfect. In a strange way it stopped 
at the cause that had parted their lives. She could see why 
it had parted their lives, while she could not see how it 
had come into his; she only knew it was there. What had 
been a want to him had never been a want to her, but with 
sure intuition she had known it would be a want to him 
long before he had recognised the want himself. 

Perhaps because of her Quaker blood she felt little need 
of strong visible foundations for faith. Christianity would 
have faded away like a mountain mist if it had been left to 
the guardianship of “those who owned the Quaker rule.’’ 
Perhaps because she was a woman she could not see that; 
or perhaps because her soul was so perfect she did not seem 
to need that which the brutal world needed — logic, author- 


404 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


ity, the supernatural chained to the natural, to hold it back 
from degradation and to lift it up to sublimest heights of 
faith by sternest rules of life. 

It was the last long night of that long Easter week, just 
eight days since she and Edward had talked their last to- 
gether. As on that night, the household were asleep or 
silent. It was late, morning perhaps — she did not know. 
The paschal moon was shedding a glory of light on the gray 
walls of the church outside and on the tender young trees 
so sparsely clothed. All day she had been mourning, mourn- 
ing like the dove that sits alone upon the housetop. The 
heart of Rachel crying for her children would not be com- 
forted. It seemed the darkest hour of all since it had begun 
to be dark. 

And in a moment, without words, without thoughts al- 
most, a great peace came upon her, a vague sense of rescue, 
of being able to see what she had not seen before, though it 
had been there all along. 

God, not Thine, but Thee ! ‘ Who can be more free 

than he who desires nothing upon earth ? ’ And who can 
desire anything upon earth who has Thee ! ” 


PART V 



CHAPTER I 


I T was the night of Tuesday, the Tuesday after Low 
Sunday. Leonora had gone to bed very tired and 
dispirited. A dismantled house, irregular household 
ways, discordant tempers, the sight of others’ troubles, the 
deep, silent pressure of her own, all had worn upon her 
spirits and perhaps upon her health a little. She almost 
wished as she lay in the darkness longing for sleep, that it 
might come and that she might not have to wake from it 
ever, ever, here on earth. She was ashamed of herself; she 
knew she lacked courage, and resignation, too. She tried 
to think of the saints, and she tried to remember all she had 
ever learned about the value of suffering, and she tried to 
make acts of faith and contrition, but nothing did any good. 

Ho chastisement for the present seemeth to be joyous, but 
grievous.” She thought of that, too; but she did not find 
any comfort in the thought. She did not feel honestly that 
she had any right to call what she suffered chastisement. 
A disappointment in love, a sentimental heartbreak; she de- 
spised herself for whining over it. The trouble at home was 
trouble, but while she was away from it she had no right 
to complain about it. Ho, she said to herself, she was 
frankly peevish and discontented, and she was ashamed of 

it; she would conquer it — or 

At that moment came a sudden sharp pull at the bell of 
the front door. The night was so still it sounded very ex- 
aggerated, and she could hear some one’s steps upon the 
piazza. It gave her nerves a shock. She felt angry some- 
how about it and resentful; some bad news — only bad news 
could come at this time of night. Had nobody else heard 
it? Should she have to get up? The bell jangled and jan- 

407 


408 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


gled ; the messenger meant to make somebody come ; he 
stamped about on the piazza unnecessarily and shook the 
handle of the door. There was nothing for it but to go 
down herself. She struck a light, and throwing her wrapper 
on and stumbling into her slippers, she made her way down- 
stairs, vibrating with the nervous shock. 

The messenger, who did not like being called up in the 
night any more than she did, thrust in a despatch through 
the crack in the door, followed by a book which she was to 
sign. The message had come over the wire at the railway 
station, the office in the village being closed, of course, at 
that hour. The boy said it was marked “ important,” and 
so he had hurried all he could. It was paid, yes; but— — 

Leonora stammered out something about his coming to- 
morrow and she would give him something. He said cheer- 
fully, All right,” and clattered down the steps before she 
had locked the door. Between the cold and the nervous fear 
about the despatch she was shaking from head to foot. She 
put down the candle and tore open the envelope, which was 
addressed to her, and read: 

“Your father seriously ill; come at once.” 

It was signed “ James Reynolds,” a name entirely unfa- 
miliar to her. She read it over and over, feeling dazed. At 
this moment Sarah, roused by the noise below, came hurry- 
ing down the stairs, and Leonora put the despatch into her 
hands. 

“I don’t know who it’s from,” she said, trembling, as 
they went upstairs together. 

“ Very likely a nurse,” said Sarah, glancing at Leonora’s 
white face as she read it over. “ They will get frightened 
sometimes, though they ought to know better.” 

“You don’t think it’s — it’s — just to prepare me for — 
for — ” faltered Leonora. 

Sarah scouted the idea. In a moment she had become 
an angel. She made Leonora go back into her room and 
lie down, and she threw some blankets over her, talking all 
the while. She knelt down and put some wood on the fire 
and made it blaze. 

“ I’m going to get something warmer on,” she said finally. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


409 


when she saw Leonora's colour return a little, and then 
I'll find a time-table and we'll see what you'd better do." 

It ended in her doing all the packing, and she kept Leo- 
nora covered up warm and resting while she did it. 

There is a six o’clock train, but it’s a way train,” she 
said, as she shook out a skirt before folding it ; so you 
would gain nothing, for the seven-twenty express gets you 
to town ten minutes before it would.” 

What time do I get to town ? ” asked Leonora. 

You get there,” said Sarah, smoothing out the flounces 
carefully, ^^you get there at nine forty-five. That train 
makes but two stops; it's a splendid run. There! Now 
that tray is full, except for some light thing that will fit 
in that corner. Oh, here’s just what I want, these veils and 
that mouchoir case ! ” 

“ Are you sure there isn't any way I could get there 
earlier ? ” asked Leonora. Thought after thought was stab- 
bing her; what might be happening now, this very minute? 
what might the loss of an hour be? how could she ever for- 
give herself if by any mistake she missed seeing him alive? 

^‘Perfectly, my dear girl, perfectly sure. Now just let 
me arrange everything for you. I’m going in the train with 
you as far as the Branch; I've got an errand there, and I’ll 
go all the way if you don't feel well. But you will feel 
well, and you must try to get some sleep; and when I've 
finished the packing I'm going to lie down here on the sofa 
and sleep, too.” 

Sarah's confident tone involuntarily helped her. What 
if a nurse had got frightened about some symptom which 
had come up unexpectedly? What if her father had some 
slight attack which he thought alarming and had wanted 
her, and told the nurse to telegraph? 

She fell asleep for an hour or two, while Sarah watched 
over her as if she had been a child. Sarah did not feel the 
confidence that she affected; very likely the worst had hap- 
pened, and daylight would bring a despatch for which 
this had just been sent as a preparation. But there was no 
law against hoping and inspiring hope in Leonora, if it 
could be done. 


410 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


Leonora kept up very well on the journey; but when the 
cab stopped before the door at home a great fear came over 
her. There was a carriage standing there. Her ring was 
very promptly answered; the man said, in reply to her agi- 
tated questions, that his master’s condition remained un- 
changed. She went into the drawing-room hurriedly, feel- 
ing for the instant so unnerved she wanted to collect herself 
before she saw any one. In a moment, as she sat there, she 
heard a man’s step coming quickly down the stairs and 
heard some one say to the servant: 

Has Miss Hungerf ord arrived ? ” 

She started to the door and was met by a well-dressed 
man of about thirty, who introduced himself as her father’s 
doctor. “ Your father’s condition is rather better than when 
I telegraphed you last night,” he said. “ It is, of course, 
only a slight amelioration.” 

“ Is there — no hope — of his getting over it ? ” she said 
falteringly. 

“ I’m afraid there isn’t much,” he returned, looking at 
her with a scrutiny which resulted in a softening of his 
expression — before it had been one compounded of anxiety 
and distrust. “We can never be sure, you know.” 

“ How — ^when — was my father taken ill ? ” she asked. 
“You know I — haven’t heard anything ” 

She felt for a moment rather faint, and put out her 
hand to steady herself by a chair. The doctor quickly placed 
one for her, and said: 

“ Perhaps we’d better not talk about it now, till you are 
rested.” 

She moved her hand and tried to say “ now ” steadily. 

“ I was sent for to Mr. Hungerford on Friday evening,” 
he said. “I don’t usually attend him, but Hr. Mercer is 
away and I am left in charge of his patients. I found him 
in a very agitated, nervous state. I should have said he had 
gone through some excitement. He had no symptom, how- 
ever, that indicated any serious disturbance; I gave him 
some sedative, advised quiet, and by his request came again 
on Saturday. He seemed better, decidedly better, though 
his appetite was gone and he still complained of nervous- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


411 


ness. He appeared restless and apprehensive, and made me 
promise to come again the next day. I had a feeling that — 
that — it was something in the nature of an anxiety that 
weighed on him, and not a purely physical disturbance. I 
saw him again the next day, and the next; I had examined 
him carefully every time. I believed him then to be, and I 
believe now that he then was, in a fairly good physical con- 
dition for a man of his age. I saw no reason to apprehend 
any dangerous issue to his decidedly slight attack of diges- 
tional derangement. Yesterday I was summoned in great 
haste. I found him completely paralysed. I have never 
seen a more total collapse. I called in two men of the high- 
est eminence in consultation. There is nothing to be done, 
I am afraid.” 

Leonora^s agitation made him pause. 

“ It seems brutal to be telling you this,” he said, walking 
up and down the room. “ But — but there is no use holding 
out false hopes. I wanted you to know, everything has been 
done that we can think of. He has two of my best nurses. 
He is not suffering, I think.” 

“ Can I see him? Will he know me? ” 

‘‘You can see him. Whether he will know you or not, 
I cannot say. His eyes have a great look of intelligence; 
but speech — motion — everything is gone.” 

“ Does — does — anybody else see him ? I mean — ^besides 
the nurses — and you — and the other doctors ? ” 

“ You mean,” said the doctor, “ does his wife and do 
the members of the household see him? I have forbidden 
every one entering his room but the valet. He is faithful, 
isn’t he ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Leonora. “ He is timid, but I should think 
he is conscientious, and my father is used to him.” 

It seemed to her that he had something else to say. He 
began to speak once or twice, then said abruptly : 

“I shall be anxious to know if he seems to recognise 
you. You will, of course, try not to show agitation. I have 
to go now, but I shall be back in a couple of hours — and — 
and — perhaps you will arrange to see me down here, after 
my visit to him ? ” 


412 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


When he was gone Leonora took off her hat and cloak, 
and leaving them in the drawing-room, went up the stairs. 
The injunction not to agitate her father had given her a 
certain strength. She had to pass her stepmother’s room; 
she heard hysterical crying and a man’s low voice in admo- 
nition or consolation. There was a smell of medicines, a 
clatter of glasses, and Smeed passed her hurrying in with 
some hot mixture or other. There seemed, as always, con- 
fusion, people coming and going, a sense of excitement. 
The bells had been muffled by the doctor’s orders, and a 
man stood always at the front door to prevent that one being 
rung; but nothing else seemed muffled, doors banged below 
and above, and the servants did not lower their voices any 
more than their mistress repressed her hysterical cries. 

At her father’s door Leonora paused, trying to steady 
herself. A man, stolid-looking, quiet, evidently a nurse, 
was opening it softly, as she stood there. He seemed to have 
h^n expecting her, and let her in, and closing it, stood out- 
side. The room was strangely still, the light subdued ; on the 
bed she dimly saw a rigid figure with arms extended against 
the sides. The white counterpane, the snowy pillow, the 
table with glasses and bottles of medicine, were in rigid or- 
der, too; it was all the conventional sick-room replete with 
science and skill. 

She crept toward the bed, her heart beating violently. 

Father, dear father,” she said, sinking on her knees beside 
it. Once near him, the light was enough for her to see his 
face, the strange intelligence of his eyes, the strange rigour 
of his muscles. In an instant she felt in perfect rapport 
with him. The doctor had told her not to show agitation. 
She did not show agitation, because she was not agitated. 
She kissed the motionless hand beside her, stroked it and 
laid her cheek against it. 

I’ve come back to take care of you,” she said low. To 
stay with you always; nothing shall ever make me go away 
from you. We’ll be always together, always, always. Yes, 
I know you tell me to stay. I know everything you want to 
say. I shall always understand, you needn’t be afraid, just 
thinh it, and I’ll know it ! ” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


413 


When the doctor came back two hours later, and sent 
the nurse to ask her to see him downstairs, he foimd her 
quite over her agitation, self-reliant and intelligent. 

Do you think he recognised you ? ” asked the doctor. 

“ I know he did,” she returned. 

“ But how ? There could not have been the slightest 
quiver in his face, in his hand, in any part of his body, in 
fact?” 

“ I suppose not,” she said. But he knew me. His eyes 
— oh, I can tell by their expression. I shall never believe that 
he did not know what I said to him.” 

The doctor shook his head slightly. “ I don’t want to 
say that he does not. It is a very strange case. At any 
rate, I am glad you are here.” He hesitated again as he 
had done at their first meeting. It seemed to be very dif- 
ficult for him to say what he wanted to. “ It may be un- 
professional in me to say what I am about to,” he went on 
in a lower tone, “ and I am trusting you with a great deal. 
But I believe I can count on your perfect silence.” 

“ Surely,” she said. 

“ Very well, then, I will tell you that I am afraid that 
your father’s condition is the result of some scene yesterday 
with his wife, following the one on Friday when I was first 
called. The valet told me this yesterday, in his fright and 
horror. I think you ought to know it. You can question the 
man ; if he is not afraid, he will tell you. If he is, I will tell 
you what he told me. In the meantime, I trust you will 
keep a close watch over your father’s room, see that one of 
the nurses is always there. They are, as I told you, two of 
the best I have on my list, absolutely dependable as far as 
their work goes. Outside of that, they might be bribed or 
they might not. I do not know. But I am very glad you 
are here. I need not assure you of my anxiety to serve your 
father, and you, in all possible events.” 

That evening when Leonora went up to her room, the day 
nurse having gone, and the night nurse installed, she called 
to the valet to bring up her father’s watch to her, she wanted 
to set her own by it. The man came and she talked to him 
for a few minutes about some indifferent matters before she 
27 


414 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


touched on her father’s illness, and how he had been for the 
past week, and all that led up to the Friday’s necessity for 
sending for a doctor. The man was French, and she spoke 
to him in his own language and kindly, and as if she knew 
more, perhaps, than she did know, of these occurrences. She 
judged him rightly to be conscientious about his work, not 
from affection to his master so much as from fidelity to an 
early implanted code of duty. He had never had any affilia-. 
tion with the other servants, perhaps because he did not un- 
derstand their language and habits, or perhaps because he 
distrusted them. He had one fixed idea in his mind, to get 
enough money together to go home and buy back the little 
wind-swept farm on the Breton coast where he was born, 
and where his poor mother longed to end her days. His ten 
years’ service as valet to a querulous old marquis had been 
an admirable training for him, but it had not enriched him 
materially; he would have borne anything from his present 
master in consideration of the lavish pay he got. 

So it was not difficult for Leonora to learn from him all 
she wanted to know. It seemed that for more than a fort- 
night Mr. Hungerford had been rather out of sorts. Bap- 
tiste had a number of times been out to the chemist for min- 
eral water, and for the refilling of some of the prescriptions 
which he used when he had indigestion. The indisposition, 
however, had never kept him in the house. On last Friday 
morning he was rather later than usual in going out. Bap- 
tiste had just brought him his hat and stick when Madame 
came into the room; she had not seen Monsieur before, that 
morning. She had an envelope in her hand; she seemed a 
little fiurried and quick in her manner. She said some- 
thing to Monsieur in English, and Monsieur signalled to 
Baptiste to leave the room. He went, but stayed within 
hearing in the dressing-room adjoining. At first they talked 
low. Then Monsieur spoke loud and angry; Baptiste knew 
some of the words, they were the words Monsieur used to him 
when he was angry with him. They were talking about 
signing something; he knew that, because he had several 
times been in the room when Monsieur’s lawyer was there, 
and had more than once made his signature as witness to a 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


415 


paper. Madame was crying and coaxing, while Monsieur 
was saying the bad words very loud. She said something 
about Sioux Palls and about what he had promised her 
there, and then I think she gave him the paper she had in 
her hand. 

“ I could see a little, though the crack was not large. I 
could see Monsieur, he was just in range of it. He 
caught the paper and glanced at it; he looked very furi- 
ous. He tore it in two pieces and threw it in the fire. 
Madame gave very dreadful shrieks, and he said awful 
things to her. They had moved so I could not see them, but 
I think she was trying to get at the paper on the hearth be- 
fore it was all burned up, and he was holding her by the 
wrists and keeping her back till it should be all burned up. 
But I don’t know, I can’t be sure of what I did not see. 
Then she screamed out for her woman to come; she called 
‘ Smeed ! Smeed ! ’ And Smeed, who was outside the hall- 
door listening, ran quickly in. Madame tried to faint, but 
Monsieur turned his back on her, and came into the dress- 
ing-room where I was, and told me to get his hat and stick; 
he had forgotten that I had taken them into his room, but 
I hurried in to get them, and to see if the paper on the 
hearth was all burned up, which it was not. Smeed was try- 
ing to get Madame off her arm, to snatch it up, but I was 
before her, and got it, and I have it in my box upstairs and 
I will get it for Mademoiselle when she wants it. I don’t 
know if it’s any good. Then I took my master his hat and 
stick. He shook so I hoped he would not go out. He told 
me to get him some brandy, and he sat down while I went to 
the butler for it. Monsieur never took brandy in the morn- 
ing. I knew he must be very fatigue to ask for it. After 
he had drunk it, he got up and started to go out, but when 
he was at the head of the stairs he seemed to feel giddy, and 
came back and gave me his hat and stick, and told me he 
wanted to send a telegram. I went downstairs to find a 
blank, and I saw Madaffie and Smeed going out in a great 
hurry. She had got better very quick. Monsieur did not 
get better as quick. He wrote the address at the top of the 
blank, it was to Mademoiselle (that was how I knew it to 


416 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


send the doctor’s telegram last night). Then he did not 
write any more, but sent me out for some Vichy Grande 
Grille. All the next three hours he was taking first one 
thing and then another. Then he went into the library and 
telephoned for the doctor. After the doctor came he seemed 
better. He smoked and read the evening paper, but his hand 
shook and I noticed he listened to every sound in the hall. 
Madame did not come in to see him all day, though I thought 
she would, as she had telephoned she wasn’t able to keep an 
engagement to go to the theatre. The house was quieter 
than usual but he had a bad night. He didn’t say anything 
about going out, only seemed to be waiting for the doctor’s 
visit. About ten in the morning Madame came in in a pink 
rohe-de-chambre. She was very gentille and stayed a good 
while, and offered to read the paper to him, but he was rest- 
less and seemed glad when she went away. She came again 
after the doctor’s visit. She said she was so sorry she had to 
go out to dinner, it was too bad to leave him alone. He said 
^ Humph,’ and Madame grew a little red and went away. 
That night he began a letter to Mademoiselle, but he did 
not finish it ; he did not finish anything. He was restless all 
the time. I have it, with the bit of paper and the telegram 
in my box upstairs. I thought it best not to leave things 
lying about after Monsieur was taken ill. • 

“ And so it went on till Tuesday morning, Monsieur al- 
ways tired and restless, and listening and listening, and 
always waiting for the doctor, and Madame always coming 
in and coaxing and saying nice things to him, and Monsieur 
always drawing a big breath and looking relieved when she 
went away. That morning he seemed more like himself ; he 
even said, if the doctor thought best, he would go out in the 
afternoon a little. I had gone downstairs about half-past 
nine, when I saw that — that gentleman, doubtless Mademoi- 
selle knows — ^who comes here every day. He had with him 
a dark, small man. He looked like a man of business. They 
came quickly up the stairs and Smeed was waiting at the 
door of Madame’s boudoir to let them in, and then she shut 
the door. When I got back to Monsieur’s room, Madame 
was there, talking and being very pleasant with him. I 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


417 


went in the dressing-room. I didn’t want to be sent out 
again. I saw she was a little strained and nervous, and I 
knew there was something in hand. She managed to shut 
the door between the rooms. That I regretted, but I could 
not possibly prevent it. Smeed, I knew, would be at the 
other door. I had to make the best of it, however. They 
talked low for a while ; she talked more than he did, and then 
there came a knock at the door, and she said ^ Come in,’ and 
then I heard her speaking to Monsieur Harvey Blount as if 
she hadn’t seen him before, and presenting somebody. They 
talked a good while ; gradually the small dark man seemed to 
talk most, then I heard Madame sharp and quick, then Mon- 
sieur Harvey Blount in a sort of bully tone. Then Monsieur 
started up. I heard him push back his chair, which fell 
over ; he called ^ Baptiste ’ in a husky sort of way. I tried to 
push open the door, but somebody was against it. I heard 
Monsieur say something about thieves. I knew the word. 
The small dark man said something in a hard sort of a 
voice, as if he wanted to make him afraid. My master said : 
‘ Never another cent, so help me God ! ’ I knew every one 
of those words and he spoke them out very strong. Then 
they all began talking at once; nobody could hear anything. 
I felt as if they were all around him trying to make him do 
something. I turned the handle of the door again, but some- 
thing heavy had been pushed against it. I ran to the hall, 
but Smeed was at the door, as I knew she would be, and I 
hurried back and tried mine again. They were so occupied 
they didn’t hear me — it moved a little way. I could just 
see in. 

“ There was Monsieur standing in the middle of the 
room ; he wasn’t near any piece of furniture, he was holding 
himself very straight — his face — I had never seen his face 
look like that before, I should almost have thought it was not 
Monsieur. Madame had her hand on his arm, she was push- 
ing a paper at him and talking like — like a devil — if Made- 
moiselle will pardon me. The small dark man was standing 
the other side of him ; he looked threatening and angry, and 
was fixing his black eyes on him and saying things to 
frighten him, I know. The-^the other one, Madame’s friend. 


418 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


was a little behind, out of sight of Monsieur ; he was holding 
his breath and watching them, and you would have said he 
didn’t breathe at all or see anything but just those three that 
stood there. I pushed the door open, but they didn’t hear me, 
they wouldn’t have heard anything. I said to myself, ‘ Mon- 
sieur called me, I have a right to enter,’ but at that moment 
Monsieur made some sort of a strange sound — I can’t tell 
Mademoiselle what it was like. Before I could get in, he 
had fallen forward on his face, making those awful sounds. 
Madame shrieked and screamed. I got to him first. The two 
men tried to lift him up, while I held his head ofi the floor. 
I called to Smeed to get me sal-volatile, but she had her 
hands full with Madame, who was clutching her and shriek- 
ing like a madwoman. I told the men, one of them, to let go 
Monsieur’s feet and run to the telephone and call the doctor, 
and I said the number over and over to them, but they both 
started when I said ‘ the doctor,’ and both of them made for 
the door. Madame clutched at her friend and told him not 
to leave her, but they both said something quick, and went, 
and I heard their steps very fast down the stairs and the 
front door bang after them. I told Smeed to ring the bell, to 
call the servants. I couldn’t bear to lay Monsieur down on 
his face again. Madame was screaming and grasping hold of 
Smeed, and she couldn’t shake her off, though I’ll do her the 
justice to say she tried to. I yelled for the servants, hut 
with all the crowd of them living off him, there wasn’t one 
to come. So I laid him down gentle as I could and ran for 
the door. On the floor just by it was the paper Madame had 
dropped when he fell. It was the one she was trying to make 
him put his name to. I caught it up as I ran, and stuffed 
it into my pocket; it is upstairs with the letters that I have 
kept for Mademoiselle. I got the doctor the minute I called ; 
it was very good luck he had not gone out. He was at the 
house in five minutes and kneeling down by poor master. 
We got the butler and one of the other men, and we turned 
him over on his back, but we did not move him nor do any- 
thing to him till the nurses and the two other doctors got 
here. It was great good fortune to get them all there so 
quick. Sometimes you can’t get Central, and then after you 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


419 


have got it, you can’t get the number for twenty minutes. 
But see, there were all those four numbers to get after we’d 
got Central, and you would have thought they’d all been 
standing waiting with their ears at the tube for us to ring 
them up.” 

He stopped and wiped his forehead. It was several min- 
utes before Leonora could speak, and going over it all seemed 
to have exhausted Baptiste. 

“ Did the doctor stay on with him long ? ” she asked in 
a low tone. 

“He didn’t go away at all till after the other doctors 
came again in the evening. And he was there again at 
seven o’clock this morning, and then near ten, when Made- 
moiselle saw him. C^est un brave homme, ce docteur. And 
the nurses, though they are like two kings in those rooms, 
and don’t take conseil of anybody that’s been there before 
them, they know their business and they carry out the doc- 
tor’s orders, whoever may want to interfere. There was Ma- 
dame howling at the door to come in, but she never got a 
foot across the sill. And there was Smeed, trying to cheat 
and bribe them to let her in to look a minute at Monsieur 
to comfort her poor mistress. It is my true belief it was to 
find that piece of paper that she sought to enter. That 
would have been a comfort to her poor mistress, I am very 
sure. But she never got her nose inside the door, ah, 
never ! ” 


CHAPTER II 


M ademoiselle,” said Baptiste, presenting himself 
at Leonora’s door the day after this, it is but well 
that you should know what is passing under this 
roof that is yours.” 

She knew that Baptiste’s keen, not to say malevolent, 
eyes were following every movement of Smeed and her mis- 
tress, but she herself was so sore-hearted she could not take 
interest in anything concerning the woman to whom her fa- 
ther owed his death-blow. Nothing could remedy the ill she 
had done, no punishment could be great enough for her, but 
she herself had the instinct to try to forget her, to spare her- 
self the pain of the sight of her, of the thought of her. That 
motionless figure, those pathetic eyes were all that the world 
contained for her just now. She had only been in his rooms 
and in her own since she came back, and she had not seen 
her stepmother at all; she did not speculate upon whether 
this exemption could go on indefinitely, she was only thank- 
ful that it was going on now. So when Baptiste presented 
himself with discovery of fresh evil-doing written in every 
line of his face, she shrank from the interview. But it 
would not do to repress his energy and to appear ungrateful, 
so she listened to his tale. 

There had been messengers and telegrams and telephones 
between steamship companies and. the house all the morning. 
There were cabins engaged for Saturday’s boat — he could tell 
Mademoiselle the name of the boat and the numbers of the 
cabins if she wished to know ; there were trunks being packed 
privately in Smeed’s rooms upstairs; there was an express 
wagon coming to the house at ten o’clock to-night to take 
some of them away. There had been an attempt made by 
some one to get into Monsieur’s desk in the library where 

420 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


421 


Monsieur kept his money, which he, Baptiste, had antici- 
pated by setting a trap which betrayed the attempt. And, 
finally, there was silver being packed to be sent away. And 
it was not going to a safe deposit, but to some private 
person. 

Leonora felt a sickening shame at the tale and wished 
Baptiste had not told her, but she promised to speak to the 
doctor about it when he came that morning, and to show him 
the papers Baptiste had given her. 

When he came, she went into the library adjoining her 
father’s room to see him. “ I suppose,” she said, when she 
had told him the story, “ that she wants to get out of the 
sight and sound of trouble. She only lives for pleasure, 
and if she has any remorse she wants to forget what has 
happened.” 

She has sent for me to her room more than once,” said 
the doctor. She seems to have the keenest anxiety to know 
what the probabilities are as to — to — the length of time that 
Mr. Hungerford may linger. She has wanted a copsulta- 
tion about the case with some doctor of whom I have never 
heard. I have refused to meet the man she names, and I ask 
you to decline to have your father subjected to a further ex- 
amination. I have given her to understand that Mr. Hun- 
gerford’s case is obscure, and that no prognostication of its 
result is possible. She is evidently planning to go away till 
his death, and then come back and claim her third in the 
estate, as she seems to have failed to get him to sign this 
will,” and he looked at the paper spread out on the table 
before them. Heavens, what a woman ! ” and he shook his 
head. 

“ There is nothing I need do about it, is there ? ” asked 
Leonora faintly. As to the silver, and all that, I don’t 
care an atom for it. I would rather she took everything in 
the house than that she made any scandal that would injure 
my father with his friends.” 

I’m afraid there’s going to be scandal whatever you do,” 
said the doctor. “ She’s evidently short of money, and she is 
bound to get it somehow, for she’s absolutely unscrupulous, 
though she is anything but clever in her methods.” 


422 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


‘'Wouldn’t it be better for me to give Her a check?” 
asked Leonora artlessly. “ I have some money in the bank. 
It might save her from doing disgraceful things, mightn’t 
it?” 

“I’m afraid nothing would save her from that,” he an- 
swered gravely, having conquered a smile that threatened 
before Leonora looked up at him. “ It would be a bad begin- 
ning, she would impoverish you in a year. Besides,” he 
added, seeing this argument had not much weight with her, 
“ it might not look well for your father. It might look as 
if he had been niggardly with her. I advise you, I earnestly 
advise you, to give her nothing, not even to see her if you 
can avoid it. She will forge your father’s name, I have no 
question as to that, if she cannot get enough money, other- 
wise, to go away.” 

“ Forge ! ” exclaimed Leonora with a shudder. “ She 
wouldn’t do that ! ” 

“ That is just what she will do, if she isn’t stopped,” he 
answered. “ Do you know his bank ? ” 

“ Oh, yes! The National. He is one of the direc- 

tors. I think he keeps his money there.” 

“ Do they know you there ? ” 

“ Yes, I’m sure they do, I always go there for my 
money.” 

“ Well, then. Miss Hungerford, I am going to tell you 
what you ought to do, and the sooner it’s done, the better. I 
will write a certificate of your father’s inability to attend to 
any business matters, a statement of his condition, in fact, 
and you will take it at once to the bank. Ask to see one of 
the directors, and explain to him that they are not to pay 
any check drawn to his order signed by him of a later date 
than Friday last. You may add a word about one of the 
servants being suspected, which will make a sort of excuse 
for your anxiety. Don’t lose any time about this,” he said, 
drawing a portfolio toward him and hunting out a pen. “ It 
is hard for you to do it, I know ; I would do it for you myself 
if I could, but there’s no one else can do it at this moment. 
You can prevent any scandal for the present, perhaps, by 
giving this warning; directly you have been to the bank you 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


423 


ought, I think, to see your father’s lawyer. He will be your 
best adviser, no doubt. This is only a stop-gap, so to speak; 
you will have prevented her getting hold of anything to-day ; 
to-morrow the lawyer will be to the fore.” 

I wish I did not have to do this,” said Leonora. It 
looks so gross, so horrible. Isn’t it possible that she hasn’t 
ever even thought of this crime? She isn’t, I know, a 
good woman, but how do we know she would dare to commit 
a crime, a real crime, like forgery ? ” 

My dear Miss Hungerford,” said the doctor, folding his 
note and thrusting it into an envelope and dashing an ad- 
dress across its face, “ I don’t wonder that you find it hard 
to believe such things of any woman, but this time trust my 
judgment and go to the bank without delay. You couldn’t 
be doing your father a better service than by keeping the 
scandal, that a forged check would cause, out of the papers. 
You will have done her no harm, you will not have men- 
tioned her name.” 

If she did do it, we could keep it out of the papers by 
paying the bank, couldn’t we ? ” 

“Ask the man of law that,” he said, putting the letter 
into her hand. “ I am only the medicine-man, but I am 
your well-wisher and I think my advice is sound. When I 
come this afternoon you will tell me, perhaps, how matters 
have turned out.” 

She went reluctantly on her errand, and with much trepi- 
dation gave the director the certificate, and explained things 
as the doctor had suggested, about a servant on whom some 
suspicion rested, though, of course, without mentioning 
Smeed’s name. 

The director was very kind and reassuring, and she left 
his august office with a sense of duty done. As she was 
going down the steps of the bank with Baptiste in attend- 
ance, she met Smeed face to face. The woman gave a start 
but passed on. As Baptiste was shutting the cab door he 
asked if Mademoiselle would allow him to tell the coachman 
to wait a moment in the street around the corner ? He would 
not keep Mademoiselle more than a few minutes, he was 
sure, a very few minutes. Leonora had not long to wait; he 


424 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


came back in subdued triumph. Smeed had not even gone 
into the bank after seeing Mademoiselle had been there be- 
fore her, but had waited a bit in the corridor, and then with 
many cautious glances out into the street, had hurried down 
the steps, called a cab, and disappeared in the direction of 
the house. 

Leonora gave the order to go downtown to the lawyer’s 
office, and sank back in the cab with a bitter sense of having 
entered into a world as new to her as it was repugnant. She 
felt herself ignorant of its most primitive laws; she had no 
possible chance if anybody chose to be dishonest. She did 
not know who to trust or where to turn. 

That evening when the doctor paid his last visit to her 
father, she waited for him, sitting by the library fire. 

“Well?” he said interrogatively, sitting down the other 
side of the chimney, pulling up his trousers at the knee a 
little as he did it; “well. Miss Hungerford, was your visit 
to Broad Street satisfactory ? ” 

He looked interested; it is a great thing, when you have 
to tell people anything, to have them look interested. Leo- 
nora had not noticed the doctor’s appearance before; she 
could hardly have told whether he was young or old, light or 
dark, well-looking or ill-looking; he had been just the doc- 
tor, just the person attending her father, just some one who 
could tell her about him. How that he had that interested 
look, she began to see that he was not old, that he had a 
fresh clear skin, keen dark eyes, a dark moustache and dark, 
close-cut hair. He seemed expectant now, as he asked her 
the question, and sat down opposite her on the other side 
of the fire; she recognised that that was not the way he 
looked generally. He generally looked as if he did not mean 
to look interested, as if he meant to look professional, and 
professional only. 

“ I suppose it was satisfactory ; I don’t know,” she re- 
turned. “ It is so hard to say just what is satisfactory and 
what isn’t. The lawyer asked me a good many questions. 
I did not understand all of them, but those I did, I answered 
as clearly as I could.” 

“ What sort of things were they that you did not under- 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


425 


stand? I am a lay person and don’t deal in law-terms, but 
perhaps I can translate them to you.” 

“ He said, well — this is about what I thinh he thinks of 
the whole business. He thinks very much as you do — about 
— my stepmother. He says it was the right thing to go to 
the bank at once, as you advised, and that instant measures 
must be taken to protect the more important interests of the 
estate. He is going to do — all sorts of things that I don’t 
understand — to-morrow morning. He says — now this is 
what I don’t think satisfactory — he says there must be a 
commission — whatever that is — appointed at once to decide 
upon my father’s mental condition, and to — to see — whether 
he is capable, or ever will be capable, of attending to his 
affairs again. I can’t make out whether this commission 
have got to see my father, or whether they will decide what 
to do by just hearing your report and the reports of the 
other two doctors. Do you know ? ” 

“ I should think they would have to see him,” answered 
the doctor. 

“ Then,” said Leonora, “ they mustn’t do it. He says my 
consent is necessary to any step they take. I can’t consent 
to this.” 

“ Excuse me, but I can’t understand why you should ob- 
ject. There would not be any disagreeable publicity for 
you.” 

I don’t care for anything that may be disagreeable 
to me. But I do care to spare my father this. You don’t 
think he is conscious of anything that goes on. I feel sure 
he is. I feel sure that dread of being forced to do something 
he does not want to do, has taken possession of him. His 
mind is jarred, displaced, but not destroyed to the extent you 
think. When I come into the room, he looks relieved. When 
there is the sound of — of — that woman’s hysterical voice 
outside, there is terror in his eyes, terror like a child who 
has been frightened by something, and who’s always think- 
ing it will come again. And to see strangers standing round 
his bed might be fatal to him. It was that strange man try- 
ing to force him to sign the paper that brought on his 
attack. Who knows what his poor brain would make of 


426 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


those strang'e men? Oh, please don’t encourage them to do 
it ; don’t ask me to let them do it ; keep everybody out of his 
sight but just those he’s used to seeing, and when the house 
is all quiet, after she’s gone on Saturday, maybe he won’t 
suffer so much, maybe he’ll have a little rest before — before 
the end.” 

“ Let me say I think you exaggerate. Miss Hungerf ord ; 
at best we can only surmise.” 

“ Well, one surmise is not worth any more than another, 
is it? You surmise he won’t suffer from the intrusion of 
strangers into his room, and I surmise he will.” 

“ But granting he should suffer a little from the disturb- 
ance, which I doubt, what is that compared with the serious 
results to — to the future of his family ? ” 

“I am his family; there is no one else to benefit by 
saving his fortune from that woman. And I am willing to 
take the risk. It is, after all, only a risk. She may never 
succeed in doing me any considerable damage. She is not 
clever, she is only bad. Another day, and she will be out of 
the country. Let her go, please let her go, and let my father 
have peace.” 

“ It’s so short a time he’s got to live. Miss Hungerf ord ; 
I don’t want to deceive you.” 

“ Whether it’s longer or shorter. Dr. Reynolds, isn’t 
it his sacred right? Ho one ought to deprive him of it.” 
There was a long pause. 

“ I am sorry you feel this way about it,” he said at length. 

It seems to me if you were older ” 

“ Then I am glad I am not older. Ho, please don’t ask 
me to consent to this. He looks to me for protection. There 
was a letter he began to me that Baptiste found in his port- 
folio ; he said in it that he wanted me to come back to help 
him defend himself from her. He never finished the letter. 
His mind had got into that state he could not stand up 
against her; I saw it all along. I wish I had not gone away, 
but he wanted me to go ; I suppose he thought he would have 
more peace, for she was very insolent to me and didn’t want 
to have me here.” 

Leonora sat leaning back in the chair, her eyes fixed on 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


427 


the fire. She twisted her handkerchief round and round in 
her fingers, there was a fiush on her face, and her voice was 
husky. After rather a long pause she straightened herself a 
little and conquered the huskiness in her voice and said: 

“ I don’t want to seem obstinate, but I have such a fixed 
conviction, I canH go against it. I hope you and the law- 
yer won’t think too ill of me.” 

“ There’s no danger of our thinking ill of you,” he said 
in a low tone. Then after a pause he said : “ I will go and 
see him to-morrow. Perhaps it can be arranged to accept our 
reports and get what we want without subjecting your father 
to any agitation. If this can be arrived at in any way, I 
shall do my best to further it ; you may rely on me.” 

He went away, quite thrilling with the girl’s disinterest- 
edness. While he buttoned his overcoat in the hall below 
and hunted for his hat, for there were three or four coats 
and hats there, and the reception-room was shut, he asked 
himself whether this was perfectly professional, whether, in 
fact, this going downtown to talk the matter over with the 
lawyer wasn’t totally unprofessional. Certainly, he had done 
nothing like it ever before, in his profession or out of it. 
But then he was comparatively young in his profession and 
he had had no case in any way like it before ; none, in fact, 
in which a young and rich and lovely girl bore any part at 
all. 

Friday was not a quiet day in the house, though it was 
meant to be. Madame’s hysteria seemed to have been 
brought under control, but there were people coming and go- 
ing, and there was endless calling of cabs and ringing for 
messengers and shouting through telephones. Smeed was al- 
ways going off in cabs with packages, and coming back and 
going off with more. The carriage for some reason was not 
used; cabs, non-committal, irresponsible cabs fitted the ne- 
cessity better. Baptiste had discovered that the servants 
were told by Smeed that her mistress was ordered a change 
of air by the doctors. The poor lady could not recover from 
the shock of Monsieur’s sudden illness, she was so sensitive 
to the sight of suffering; she was sent for a few weeks to 
Washington for a total change of scene. If that did not re- 


428 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


store the tone of her nerves, she would have to g’o farther 
south. Baptiste was many times that day called into con- 
sultation with the doctor and the lawyers. He brought abso- 
lute proof that the three were booked for Liverpool, that the 
servants had been unpaid for two months, that a large box 
of silver had been taken away, ostensibly to be polished ; that 
as many as eleven trunks had been sent off by express besides 
those that were to be taken that night in a baggage-van, 
supposedly to the night-train to Washington, actually to 
the dock at Hoboken, whence the steamer sailed at an early 
hour on Saturday. It was probable that the Egyptians were 
being spoiled, but what could the Egyptians do about it? 
There was nothing save the household accounts and the ser- 
vants’ wages that came under the head of financial dishon- 
esty. Mr. Hungerford’s cheque-book showed large payments 
to his wife, the stubs marked carefully, respectively for 
wages, for household expenses, for tradespeople, which, prob- 
ably, had none of them been paid. The trunks and the 
silver-box were petit larceny. The choice was between ar- 
resting the woman and her lover with the certainty of a 
most malodorous scandal laid before the public, or letting 
them go scot-free with the probability of sweet surprises 
continually arriving as the weeks wore on. 

Leonora was summoned to a hurried meeting with the 
lawyers, and weary hours were spent in consultation with 
them and with the bank directors, and with all persons with 
whom her father had any large moneyed interests. She did 
not understand an eighth part of what they said; probably 
under different circumstances she could have understood 
fairly well the drift of their explanations. But with such 
confusion whirling in her head, such anxiety beating in her 
heart, she would have been more than human if she had 
been able to follow them through their questions, great or 
small, their technicalities, their possibilities. She had an 
instinct, however, not to betray her ignorance, and to take 
shelter behind the fact that she left everything to their judg- 
ment. Her father had trusted them, she trusted them, and 
felt very grateful for their counsel and their protection. 
She only asked that nothing be done about appointing a 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


429 


commission of lunacy to inquire into her father’s ability to 
administer his own affairs that would involve any examina- 
tion of him by strangers. If the reports of the three doctors 
who had already seen him would suffice, she would offer no 
objection. And she also asked that nothing be done to 
recover anything that her father’s wife might have taken 
from the house, and that she herself be allowed to pay what- 
ever bills there were outstanding, and that in every way 
the effort should be to conceal the unhappy result of her fa- 
ther’s marriage and not to reveal it trying to save a few 
thousand dollars more or less. They warned her that the 
debts might run up into the hundred thousands, that one 
could never calculate upon the greed or the recklessness of 
such a woman. She answered that until after her father’s 
death, it seemed improbable that she would dare to risk what 
was inevitably hers as his widow. And, as there was very 
little hope of his living a long time, it was her earnest wish 
that nothing might be done to disturb or distress him, and 
that after his death every reasonable, almost every unreason- 
able, concession might be made to keep from his friends 
the knowledge of his humiliations. She looked so young, 
standing there before them pleading against her own inter- 
ests, that there was not a man among them who did not 
revise a little his rigourous code of ethics; who could not 
believe for a moment or two at least, that there were things 
more sacred than money and more compelling than the rules 
of common-sense. 

A great silence fell on the house after the van of luggage 
and the two cabs with their endless litter of petit hagage 
drove away about nine o’clock that evening. Smeed and her 
mistress went in one, and a man who had come to attend to 
getting them off, in the other. He had been running about 
on many errands that day for Smeed; he was evidently a 
trustworthy person. Mrs. Hungerford had no hysterics and 
went out quite silently. Smeed came back and rather made 
a point of giving some orders to the butler, which she said 
she had forgotten, and which implied that the management 
was still in her hands, and this was only an interregnum. 

28 


430 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


About half-past eleven o’clock that night Baptiste came 
in and went directly to the library to see Mademoiselle. He 
had followed the parting guests unobtrusively in a circum- 
spect cab; he had seen them safely at the steamer’s wharf in 
Hoboken where they had gone directly. What had detained 
him longer, was waiting for the arrival of Monsieur Harvey 
Blount, who was a little late, but he came at last, had his 
luggage put on board, paid for and dismissed his cab and 
disappeared below. Baptiste thought everything was settled ; 
but he had found a compatriot on board, a deck-steward, 
and he thought it best to ask him to keep an eye on the 
party, and if they should manifest any intention to leave 
the boat, he was to send him a despatch at once. That, of 
course, was only to reassure Mademoiselle; if she did not 
hear before ten o’clock next morning she would know surely 
that they were out of the country. 

Ho despatch came, and the next day Leonora walked 
about the house with a strange emancipated feeling. The 
empty rooms were left in all stages of untidiness, but the 
emptiness of them was balm, and their silence solace. She 
sat by her father and leaned her face down on the pillow 
beside him, and told him there was no one there any more, 
that he and she were all alone and that everything was go- 
ing to be quiet and to be just as he would like it. She had 
a conviction that he understood her, and perhaps he did, for 
the nurses noticed that some of his symptoms were more 
favourable, and wondered between themselves if he felt the 
difference. 

There was a good deal to be done, however, in getting the 
house on a peace-footing. The servants, who had suddenly 
become very respectful, had to be dismissed, and alas, to be 
paid as well as dismissed. The arrears of wages and of in- 
cidentals were appalling, but as they could not be disputed, 
the thieving creatures had it all in their own hands. Bap- 
tiste developed new and valuable talents; released from the 
ten-years’ tyranny of the old marquis, and the recent reign 
of terror under his American master, he had bloomed out 
into an astonishing intelligence. He had proved himself a 
first-class detective, and now he slipped easily into the role 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


431 


of maitre d’Jiotel. Leonora had told him to engage new ser- 
vants, but that their number must be cut down to one-half, 
and presto ! it was done. The service was better in ratio of 
its reduction, and the expenses shrunk in the same propor- 
tion. His inbred French thrift was placed at the service of 
his employer without extra charge and his invaluable train- 
ing was also thrown in. 

WTien Leonora had arranged for the return of the Figure- 
head, and had had the Ballet Girl series sent to the attic to 
stand with their toes against the wall, and the most salient 
immoralities of the furniture retired, she felt that at last 
she was at home. Singularly enough, by contrast it now 
seemed attractive to her. And the indefinable feeling of 
reconcilation with her father grew every day. ^‘It may be 
against all common-sense to feel that he understands me,’’ 
she said to herself, but all the same I do believe it, and if 
it helps me, why should I give up believing it ? ” 

The social conditions were not altered. It was not gener- 
ally known that Mrs. Hungerford had gone away, nor that 
Leonora was there, and Mr. Hungerford’s illness was ac- 
cepted by his large number of friends at the club quite 
stoically. 

Poor old Oscar,” they said for the first day or two over 
their cigars. “ Wonder if there’s any chance of his pulling 
through? ” For a week, perhaps, some one or other of them 
sent to inquire for him, but as the report was always that 
his condition was unchanged, they gradually grew tired of 
sending. “ Men will forget thee sooner than thou thinkest,” 
wrote the wise Thomas a Kempis some centuries ago, and 
there does not seem great ground for hope that they will 
remember any longer in this century, when there is so much 
more to do. 

The weeks passed on with few changes; the sick-room 
with its old rules, the household with its new rules, stricken 
age fading away, keen youth steeling itself to bear, the world 
rolling along indifferent. 


CHAPTER III 


T he routine of Leonora’s days was sometimes broken in 
upon by letters from lawyers, or visits to them; by 
the receipt of bills of unimaginable size from credit- 
ors of her stepmother, by consultations with the doctor upon 
the slight variations in her father’s case, by going to Mass, 
by taking a drive in the park. The rest of the time she was 
at her father’s bedside, alone but for that silent figure, un- 
seen but by those strangely intelligent eyes. She had the 
habit of saying her prayers there, of making her lecture 
spirituelley of reciting her rosary beside him. She apologized 
to herself for this, saying it could not do any harm, but in 
her heart she probably nourished a hope that it might do 
some good to the imprisoned soul shut up while life lasted 
from all dictation of the will. Supposing him to be con- 
scious, what a tragic fate! To see the evil he had done 
and to be for ever unable to undo it. To know the truth 
at last and never to have power to speak it. To bum to 
right some wrong and not to be able to move hand or foot 
to do it. To be raging with remorse and, before God and 
man, to be struck dumb. 

One would have said it was a morbid sort of life for a 
young girl to lead even for a short time, but it was the 
only sort of life that was put before her, and so, if she had 
a conscience, she had to lead it whether she would or no. 

By-and-by, however, the doctor began to say to her 
that she ought to go away, if even for a little while. For 
about the last of June there had begun one of those pro- 
tracted periods of heat that empty the city of all who can 
get away, and that make the life of those who cannot almost 
unbearable. Night and day the heat kept up. The humid- 

432 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


433 


ity was excessive; there was not a breath of air. The fre- 
quent showers did not make any change in the suffocating 
atmosphere; it seemed to be even hotter after a burst of 
thunder and a dazzle of lightning and a torrent of rain 
than it was before. The setting of the sun brought no 
relief, except for the thought that it was one day nearer 
the change in weather that must come sooner or later. 
Children were dying every day by the score, men and women 
were falling dead in the streets, the hospitals were crowded ; 
the police were ordered to let people lie on the grass and 
benches all' night in the parks. Places of amusement were 
closed, and many shops, and all out-going trains and boats 
were filled to overflowing. As the days went on, the city 
seemed to be empty of all but some miserable creatures 
who came out at nightfall, crawling from the dingy tene- 
ment region to the better streets, where they might lie on 
the stones, still hot from the torrid sun, and seek shelter 
from the not infrequent rainfall under area steps from 
which they would have been hunted at any other season of 
the year. The beggars even did not beg; they did not want 
anything that any one could give them; their betters could 
not eat any more than they could, and a shelter only meant 
being hotter than being shelterless. 

Leonora at first was very brave. The house was large 
and cool, and when the heat began all precautions were 
taken to keep it out; but notwithstanding, in a few days 
the deteriorated air inside seemed even more devitalized than 
the torrid air of the streets. In spite of electric fans and 
all manner of scientific devices for its purification, the 
atmosphere of the sick-room grew steadily worse. The pa- 
tient showed some slight unfavourable changes. The two 
nurses, who with all their professional skill were but human, 
found that nights and days of this wore upon them. The 
case was hopeless, and that takes the heart out of a nurse 
more than anything else. It seemed to Leonora their prin- 
cipal interest was taking baths and sending out for cold 
drinks. The feeling that her father was being neglected 
when she was not in the room nailed her to his bedside. 

About this time the doctor had an imperative summons 


434 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


to Bar Harbor; that meant at least an absence of four 
days. And even the useless Figurehead had asked per- 
mission to go away for over Sunday. She fanned herself 
and bemoaned herself and certainly looked ill enough to 
excite compassion. Leonora could not refuse her permis- 
sion, but it would have been something to have had even 
her to call upon if her father should grow worse. 

At last there came a day — a Sunday — more sultry and 
oppressive than any day that had gone before it, when he 
did suddenly grow worse. She had gone to her room about 
six o’clock, so exhausted, she said to herself, she should 
die if she could not get an hour of sleep. Before the sleep 
came there came a hurried knock at the door; she was 
wanted below. She found the nurse who was in charge 
startled into very active service: his patient was evidently 
sinking. No one could help seeing that death was bringing 
to pass his act, his strange act; who could doubt it looking 
at that face so suddenly grown livid and pinched ? 

There was the confusion in the room that the approach 
of death always makes : seiwants running hither and thither ; 
remedies (remedies for what?), assistance (assistance against 
whom?) were being called for in frightened undertones. It 
was not, it must be said, of the last importance that this 
inert mass of flesh and blood and bone and sinew should 
lie there a few hours more. What possible difference could 
it make to it? It was no more him — it was it. Whatever 
it was that had made it other seemed gone. But let this 
be put down to the credit of the average man: that he will 
always strive to keep the spark of life alight in any human 
body; it is an almost unfailing instinct. The work of 
that night! The keen duel between the forces of disso- 
lution and the scientific agents of restoration! The nurses 
sweating over their task, concentration, determination in 
their faces, Baptiste following their quick words or gestures, 
now here, now there, lifting, bathing, fanning; the servants 
flying downstairs, upstairs, now for this, now for that. A 
strange doctor had been sent for, who had shaken his head, 
muttered a few words to the nurse nearest him, and gone 
away. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


435 


Midnight was past; it was growing toward two o’clock. 
There seemed a pause; whether the nurses were exhausted 
and the servants sleepy or what, the sick-room seemed to 
grow quiet. A maid whispered to one of the nurses that 
his supper was served in the other room; Leonora signalled 
to them both to go. Baptiste stood in the hall, where he 
could hear her if she called. She sat on the bed beside 
the rigid figure, gazing with yearning into his pallid face. 

“Father,” she said very low, leaning over him, “father, 
you do know me, don’t you? Oh, if you could only give 

me some sign! Only one word — just one word ” 

There was enough light for her to see his face clearly; 
the nurses, counting on his insensibility and anxious to 
watch his colour, had not shaded a light that burned near 
the bed. She saw — a movement of the lips, so long motion- 
less — she heard a low, inarticulate sound — that was all. 
She gave a little sob of joy and sank on her knees beside 

him and brought her face close to his and whispered 

What she whispered was between him and God. Was he 
shriven — was he saved — though as by fire? Who can say? 

He died an hour later. The men standing around him 
timed the very instant with their watches in their hands, 
drew a sigh of relief, and began with business-like prompti- 
tude this last stage of their service. They signed to Bap- 
tiste, who went to the telephone and called “ All over ; come 
at once ” to the undertaker, who was waiting for the sum- 
mons. The servants at one touch of a bell swarmed in and 
began silently removing all the litter of the sick-room. 
The lights were turned up; Leonora realized that her watch 
was over, and her place was no longer there. 


CHAPTER IV 


T he light of morning was creeping into her room when 
she started up and tried in vain for a moment to 
remember where she was and what had happened. 
The first collected thoughts were of great and peaceful 
things; the second of something strange and final to be 
done, of decisions to be made, of painful sights and un- 
accustomed faces. Every nerve seemed jarred; the sense 
of oppression increased upon her as she hurriedly dressed 
and went downstairs. Below the house was in rigid order, 
and very silent. There were one or two men in black, with 
melancholy faces and apologetic outlines, who moved silently 
about the corridors. It was still very early; the servants 
were probably sleeping. She wanted to go into her fathers 
room, but she dared not; everything was so strange. She 
was afraid, of what she did not know exactly. She said 
to herself she had waked up too suddenly, perhaps. It was 
half -past six only; she would go upstairs again and say her 
prayers. Perhaps by the time she had said them the ser- 
vants would be awake, or Baptiste would come. She did 
not want to see those dreadful men again. She went to 
her room and tried to say her prayers and collect her 
thoughts, but nothing went very well ; she was shaking with 
nervousness; she threw open the window and leaned out. 
There was a coolness in the air that had not been there 
before in weeks, and for a moment it refreshed her; but, 
looking down, she saw a flutter of black crape from the 
door of the house, and it went through her like a stab. She 
hurriedly drew back and shut the window, feeling very 
faint. If Baptiste, if any one would come whose face she 
had ever seen before, and who was not slimy, slidy, and 
all in black like those men gliding up and down the stairs. 

436 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


437 

Presently the maid came with a cup of tea for her, and 
she felt better when she had taken it. And then there came 
a knock at the door, and one of the nurses stood there. 
He had come to ask her “ her wishes ” about this and that 
and the other, and it filled her with a sudden panic to be 
obliged to decide in a moment about things of which she 
was absolutely ignorant. She told him to go away and 
send Baptiste to her. Baptiste did as she directed him: he 
telephoned to the club, to the lawyers, to the bank, to the 
doctor ; the answer was the same in each case — ^no one was 
in town. It was Monday morning. Every one was away 
for over Sunday, and there was no chance of any one return- 
ing before evening. No business was doing and no one 
would come back till they were obliged to come. Nothing 
but sternest necessity would bring them — scarcely even that ; 
98° Fahrenheit changes the face of values somewhat. With 
each prompt n^ative, Leonora’s heart sank lower. Bap- 
tiste, with much distress, was trying to make her under- 
stand that something must be decided on at once, and be- 
fore he had presented that necessity to her clearly he said 
something humbly about money. He had, alas! got very 
low in the household money, and the cook was wanting 
something, and one of the nurses was telegraphed to go to 
another case, and he had asked him to see if he could 
not be paid this morning. 

This .last seemed the comble. She tried not to let the 
man see her agitation ; she must get time to think, to quiet 
herself and discover the way out of it. Yes, there must 
be some way out of it. She did not at all believe that she 
could not get through it; she would go out and try to find 
some one to tell her what she ought to do. It was incon- 
ceivable that there should not be some one in the city who 
knew her father, who would help her with money, who would 
tell her what to do about the — the funeral — all that. 

Walking about the room, she stopped before the glass 
to smooth her hair; she pulled down the waist of her dress, 
she shook out the lace on her skirts she even took her hat 
from the box and hunted out gloves and a veil. 

“I don’t know where I shall go, but I shall go some- 


438 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


where, I shall find somebody,” she kept repeating to herself. 
Just as she had her hand on the bell to ring for a cab, the 
maid came to say some one was below in the drawing-room, 
she didn’t know who; one of the undertaker’s men had told 
her to tell Miss Hungerford. 

Leonora laid down her hat and gloves; was it somebody 
come to tell her her bank account was overdrawn? She 
scarcely knew what she did; her only definite purpose was 
not to be undignified and show that she did not know what 
to do. The sombre men stood obsequiously aside to let her 
pass; when she stood in the drawing-room door, she literally 
could not see, her heart beat so quick. Some one came 
forward. Leonora gave a little start and cry. 

was afraid you might be alone — ^you might need 
somebody,” said Paul Fairfax’s voice. 

— am alone — everybody is away; I — do need some- 
body,” she gasped, struggling a moment for self-control and 
then, putting her hands before her face, she burst into 
violent sobbing. 

“ Don’t ! don’t ! ” was all he could say, in his distress 
at seeing her cry. In two or three minutes she got herself 
a little under control and, taking her hands from her face, 
wiped her eyes and said incoherently : 

I am ashamed of myself for crying, but it’s been so 
dreadful all this time all alone — everybody away — the doctor 
— Father O’Farrell — the lawyers — the bank people — and I’ve 
just found I’ve overdrawn my account, and there’s not even 
one of my father’s friends left at the club — nobody to help 
me, nobody to tell me what to do. And my father only died 
a few hours ago, and those horrible men say — say — that — in 
this awful heat ” 

And she began to sob again. 

Paul thought she was going to fall, and he threw his 
arm around her and put her on a sofa and sat down be- 
side her. 

“ Listen,” he said. “ This is not the time to talk about 
it, but you know I’d give my life to save you a minute’s 
trouble. I don’t deserve that you should let me help you. 
But you’ve never been an hour out of my thoughts all these 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


439 


months, siixce I went away from you — so beastly cross — that 
night. I’ve watched the house these two terrible weeks, 
because I knew you were here and would not go away, and 
this morning, when I saw that piece of crape on the door, 
I — I was terribly cut up — ^when I thought what you’d been 
going through. Don’t cry! I’ve no business to be making 
you cry. I won’t talk about anything but Just getting these 
worries off your mind.” 

He got up and walked once or twice across the room, 
and came back and sat down by her. “ I suppose,” he said, 
“you feel badly about — about the funeral being so soon. 
Suppose I talk with the men about it? I’ll see that they 
don’t do anything that is not right. Shall I call them 
down here, or — where is the telephone? In the library? 
I want to send a message or two. Shall I go up ? ” 

In a few moments he came down. “ It is all arranged,” 
he said ; “ to-morrow morning, at ten o’clock, if you don’t 
think that too soon. And it’s a good hour — ten — isn’t it? 
And,” he went on, rather awkwardly, “ about — about where 
— it shall be.” 

“ I don’t know ; that is what troubles me. Where ought 
it to be ? ” And she looked troubled indeed. 

“ There isn’t any church where Mr. Hungerford went — 
sometimes — perhaps ? ” 

“ No,” said Leonora sadly. “ I don’t ever remember his 
going anywhere.” 

She looked so near crying again that Paul resolved to 
take it all in his own hands, and make quick work of it, 
if possible. 

“ I’ll tell you what it seems to me would be best, if 
you don’t mind,” he said. “ I’ve heard of an excellent clergy- 
man — he has the name of being a sort of saint. He wouldn’t 
do or say anything that you wouldn’t like, you know, and 
he stays in the city all summer long — he never will go 
away; and he sees to all the sick people and buries all the 
dead people of all the other parishes, though he has a pretty 
big one of his own. I’ll get him to come here to the house 
and have the service, if you like.” 

“Would that be a funeral?” asked Leonora naively. 


440 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


“Why, yes,” returned Paul; “there are a great many 
people who like it much better than a funeral in church. 
It is not so public, you know.” 

“ And what do they say, what do they do, to make it 
a funeral ? ” 

“ Well,” said Paul, racking his memory to give her cor- 
rect details and at the same time not to say anything to 
agitate her, “ they bring the — the — bier into a room, say, 
like this one here, and the family — the nearest of them, 
you know — sit in this room and the clergyman stands about 
there, and other people who come are in the next room — 
sometimes they fill up all the hall. And there is generally 
a sort of choir — a tenor and a contralto and a soprano- — and 
they sing some hymns, perhaps.” 

“What sort of hymns?” asked Leonora anxiously. 

“Well, hymns like — like, oh! I don’t know; like ‘Lead, 
Kindly Light ’ ; and there’s another — ‘ Nearer my God to 
Thee’ — they are very nice. I am sure you’d like them.” 

She looked so unhappy he was sure she would cry again, 
and it made him wretched, and he hurried on to tell her 
about the prayers and the lessons and the psalms as much 
as he could remember of them. 

“And if there’s anything else that you think of that 
you’d like to have sung, you will tell me, won’t you, when 
I come back this afternoon ? ” 

And after that he wrote out the notice to go in the 
papers, and that seemed to take a load off her mind. He 
was covertly watching her all the time, lest she should 
break down. “ And — ^now — shall I write down the names 
of the people you want despatches sent to? If you’ll tell 
me the family first,” and he poised his pencil over the 
paper. 

“My family?” she said with a weary sweep of the hand. 
“ I haven’t any family. My father’s the last of his people.” 
There was a pause. “ But I should like to let Mrs. Warren 
know.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Paul, beginning to write, relieved to find 
she was a shade less agitated. 

“ But I don’t know her exact address.” 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


441 


She’s not at home ? ” he said, with pencil suspended 
above the paper. 

“ No, oh, no,” said Leonora with a sig’h. “ She and 
Sarah have gone a great way off. Sarah would go. It’s 
to some relation of her father’s, to stay all summer. But 
I’m afraid I can’t remember the address. It’s something 
like Indiana or Illinois — or — maybe it’s Indianapolis.” 

“ It would be more likely to be Indianapolis,” said Paul, 
if it’s a city. You don’t remember the name of the rela- 
tion they’re stopping with ? ” 

“ No. I can’t remember anything to-day. It was the 
president of a bank, that’s all I can remember.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Paul, “ I know the presidents of two or three 
banks there. I can easily find out. Is there anybody else ? ” 
I want to send word to the convent,” she answered. 

It’s in Paris — the convent ? ” 

She gave him the address and he wrote it down. 

And about your — your father’s friends — at the club — 
you’ll want to let them know? The ones he saw most of, 
I mean.” 

“Yes, I ought, ought I not?” 

“ I think so, perhaps.” 

“ There is Sancton Stockwell and Courtney and — and — 
oh! why can’t I remember? — and ” 

“ I’ll arrange all that,” he said. “ There are about a 
dozen men that I’ve been in the habit of seeing him with 
at the club. I’ll get the steward to make me out a list; it 
won’t be the work of a minute; he’ll have their out-of-town 
addresses.” 

“And — and — there’s Mrs. Pelletreau — ought I to send 
her word ? ” 

“ Perhaps it would be as well. And if I think of any 
one else, shall I send a despatch in your name?” 

“Oh, if you would! But I can’t think how you’ll do 
it all — in so little time.” 

“ That’s nothing ; a man has twenty times as much as 
that to do every day.” He folded up the paper and put it 
in his pocket. He was keenly revolving in his mind how 
to give her the least distress in the two points that re- 


442 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


mained to be treated. He knew by instinct that they would 
be painful ones — the place of burial and the bank account. 

“ Your— mother— is she buried here ? ” he began, his voice 
almost failing him. 

“No,” said Leonora. “My mother died in Paris. Her 
grave is at Pere La Chaise.” 

“ And there are members of your father’s family who — 
who — are buried in America ? ” 

“Yes; in that great cemetery that you have to cross the 
river to get to. I went there once last spring when I first 
came back; the name is — Greenwood — isn’t it? My little 
brother, who died before I was born, is buried there. It 
is a large plot, railed in, with a big monument; I didn’t 
like the monument. I suppose that’s where — ^where ” 

“Yes,” said Paul in a tone of relief. “I’ll go over at 
once and attend to it. You haven’t — any choice about — 
about — where — in the plot ” 

“ Beside my little brother, I thought,” she said simply. 
“ I was very unhappy this morning, wondering how the plot 
could be found. The cemetery is like a great city, isn’t it? 
But I know, of course, that there must be a way to get 
somebody to take one to the part of it one wants. When 
one’s nervous, things look so impossible,” and the tears 
welled up in her eyes. 

“ Don’t worry about anything,” he said huskily. “ Leave 
it all to me; it will all be right.” The sting of seeing her 
tears and knowing how bewildered and unfriended she had 
felt an hour ago almost unmanned him; but the joy of 
serving her and shielding her counterbalanced this pain, 
and he wished that he did not have to go away and leave 
her ever. But he knew there was not a moment to lose, 
and that he could barely accomplish what was to be done 
if he went that instant. 

And there was the money to be talked about. That 
seemed the worst of all to him; he did not know how it 
would seem to her. Poor angel! to have overdrawn her 
bank account was so naive and nice, but to be without 
any money at such a moment of stress as this was serious. 
To borrow it from him might offend her, and to have to 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


443 


go to the bank and put a few thousands to her credit might 
compromise her. If there were more time, there were many 
ways in which he might manage it; but when a man has 
about two minutes to do a complicated thing in, he is rather 
hampered. He feigned to glance over the memoranda in 
his hand while he was saying to himself, “ How under 
Heaven am I going to do it ? ” 

I believe that’s all,” he said, putting the paper into 
his waistcoat pocket. When you can’t think of anything 
to say, the only way seems to say nothing. She had prob- 
ably forgotten about the money, but it would come back 
to her perhaps in half an hour and make her very unhappy. 
A sudden inspiration came to him; he did not stop to 
think. He pulled out a roll of bills and, handing it to her, 
said in a matter-of-fact way: “It’s so early, the banks 
aren’t open yet, and you’ll be sure to need some money. 
When I see you this afternoon, you’ll explain to me about 
your bank account and I’ll see that it’s made right. Don’t 
worry about anything. There’s absolutely nothing for you 
to do but rest.” And he was gone. 

It was later than he had said when he came back. The 
cars going to Greenwood had got blocked and he had lost 
an hour; there was another lost in finding the superin- 
tendent and arranging about the grave. It was twenty 
minutes before the clergyman could be got on the telephone 
and two hours before he could be seen; the tenor had had 
a sunstroke and was in a hospital, and three messengers 
were even now scouring the city to find another. The 
baritone and the soprano were all right, however, and the 
clergyman was sure. The day had been less oppressive as 
to weather; a breeze was springing up, and the night would 
probably bring the long-looked-for change. 

As Paul went up the steps where the black crape hung 
he had but one thought: in a few moments he should see 
Leonora, hear her voice, touch her hand, watch the colour 
come and go in her face. It had been a day of turmoil, 
of heat, of hurry, but it had been spent in her service; and 
now it was over and he should see her. He was admitted 
by a servant, and went into the drawing-room. He waited 


444 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


five minutes, ten, fifteen. At the end of that time he heard 
steps on the stairs, but they were not her steps. And then 
a voice — a man’s voice — giving an order to the servant. 
And in another moment the man belonging to the voice 
and the steps came into the room, and Paul saw a man 
comparatively young and rather conspicuously well dressed 
standing before him. 

“You wished to see Miss Hungerford?” he asked. 

Paul assented. 

“ I’m sorry,” he said, “ but it is impossible. Miss Hun- 
gerford can see no one.” 

“ I saw her this morning,” said Paul stolidly. “ It is 
necessary for me to see her this evening to tell her about 
matters which she put into my hands for to-morrow.” 

The newcomer shook his head. “I am Dr. Keynolds,” 
he said. “I have had charge of Mr. Hungerford since the 
beginning of his illness. I fancy I know fully Miss Hun- 
gerford’s wishes about to-morrow; but if there is anything 
that it is imperative she should hear, you can tell me and 
I will communicate it to her later; that is, if she is well 
enough to hear it.” 

“I am to understand,” said Paul in a voice too visibly 
controlled, “ that Miss Hungerford has been suddenly taken 
ill ? That she sees no one ? ” 

“ She has quite broken down this afternoon,” returned 
the doctor. “ I came back a couple of hours ago, and when 
I saw the state she was in I ordered her at once to bed. 
I am afraid she is on the eve of a serious illness. She 
has had a prolonged strain such as few girls of her age 
could have borne as well. I can’t say too much for her 
pluck.” (A dark cloud passed over Paul’s face as he made 
this observation.) “ I can’t say too much for her pluck, 
but I am sure she will have to pay for it. The nervous 
system is a pretty exacting creditor; you can’t overdraw 
your account with it. I have just left her room; I have 
given orders that no one goes even to her door unless she 
rings. She must have sleep or there will be trouble. I shall 
not leave the house for— let me see — for two hours at least,” 
taking out his watch and looking at it. “ If you have any 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


445 


message of importance for her, I will deliver it if she should 
wake up and seem in any way fit to hear it.” 

I won’t trouble you,” said Paul shortly, turning on his 
heels. “ It will be time enough in the morning, if she’s 
able to see me.” 

I can’t promise you she will be, you know,” remarked 
the doctor, in comfortable certainty that he could see her 
whether she were worse or better. 

Paul would have liked to kill him; his fingers itched 
to get about his throat, but he controlled himself enough 
to mutter something indefinite and go out into the hall. 
But before he got to the front door he had fought a hot 
battle with himself and he turned back. It was one of 
the most meritorious actions of his life, probably — that turn- 
ing back. If Leonora heard that he had been there to 
consult her about the arrangements for to-morrow, she 
would be distressed and nervous at not having seen him. 
She would fancy all sorts of things had gone wrong and 
she would be made worse. The doctor had left the drawing- 
room and was going toward the stairway. When he saw 
Paul he stopped. 

^‘1 think, on the whole,” Paul said, with poor grace, 
to be sure, but he said it all the same, “ I think, on the 
whole, you’d better tell Miss Hungerford, if she wakes, that 
I’ve been here, and that everything is arranged exactly as 
she wished. That she needn’t worry about anything; every 
detail has been attended to. I shall be here to-morrow 
morning about nine-thirty, and if there is anything she 
would like me to do she will send down word to me.” 

The two men looked at each other critically for an in- 
stant, and made some sort of salutation, or the excuse for 
one; then, in a moment, the becraped door shut on Paul, 
and Dr. Keynolds slowly went up the stairs. 

Once outside the house, Paul’s jealous rage redoubled. 
If it wasn’t a priest, it was a doctor; always some one be- 
tween him and her! He would have died for her, he could 
not live without her; he thirsted for the sight of her, for 
the touch of her. And he, he to whom she belonged — ^yes, 
belonged by every right most sacred to the heart — ^he must 
29 


446 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


be shut out, and that well-groomed fool, with his nervous 
systems and his overdrawn accounts and his impertinent 
praises of her pluck and no less offensive pronouncements 
about her health, could go into her room, stand by her bed, 

hold her hand, look into her eyes 

And this sort of mad turmoil in him was new. It had 
begun with the sight of Leonora not much more than a 
year ago, and it would probably only end with the posses- 
sion of her. All his life he had been good-natured ; it must 
be said he had generally been the upper dog, and the upper 
dog can always afford to be good-natured. He never had 
been envious of any one in his life — it wasn’t his way. 
He was not particularly apt to dictate, either, or to be a 
bully; he generally (except in Wall Street) went his own 
gait and let other people go theirs. He was reserved, cer- 
tainly; deucedly close-mouthed, as some one said of him, 
but never morose, never sullen. But this jealousy, this 
fierce, vindictive passion of jealousy that seemed more of 
the body than of the mind, this had only been born with 
his love for Leonora. He did not know what to make of 
himself : when the fit passed, he was ashamed ; when it was 
on, he certainly had cause to be. 


CHAPTEE V 


I T was some ten days after this that Paul broke open 
the envelope of a note, the sight of the handwriting 
on which made a beating in his ears and a suffocating 
in his throat for which he hated himself. He had picked it 
up from a heap of letters which his secretary had laid on 
the desk in his office. He had not seen Leonora since the 
day of her father’s death, nor had he had any message from 
her, nor any note. The answers that had come, when he 
had sent to inquire about her, were evidently of the doc- 
tor’s brewing. For the last two days he had not sent. He 
knew he should get nothing but the stereotyped report, and 
being in that stage of his jealousy when distrust reached 
even to her, he said to himself he would let things take 
their course. When she wanted anything of him, no doubt 
she would find a way to communicate with him. 

And she had found a way. Suppose he had gone out 
of town, as he had resolved to do, and had not got this 
note — this precious little note! It was not even written 
on black-edged paper; it was evidently written lying down, 
and the words staggered a little; it was dated the day 
before. 

haven’t been downstairs yet,” she wrote; hope to 
go down to-morrow. If you are in town and can con- 
veniently, will you come to see me in the afternoon, about 
five o’clock?” 

He wrote an answer; he tore it up and wrote another 
and another. Typewriters and telegraph-boys and clerks 
were standing ten deep in the outer office waiting while 
he got it right. Then he gave a pull to the bell and 
handed it to a boy to deliver. His eyes followed the boy 

447 


448 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


out of the door. He was so afraid something would happen 
to the boy! 

He must have arrived there all right, for at five o^clock 
Paul was standing on the steps of the Hungerford house 
and Baptiste opened the door for him as if he were ex- 
pected, and led him into the colonial room, where it was 
cool and quiet, and where there were some roses in a vase. 

He did not have to wait; Leonora came into the room 
almost before the man had left it. She was dressed in a 
long, sweeping black dress, the neck and arms showing 
through the thin material of which the gown was made. 
Around her throat was a broad collier of dull jet, and in 
her hand she carried a black fan which she kept flapping 
open and shut nervously while she spoke to him. He saw, 
after the first flush of colour at meeting him had died 
down, that she looked a little pale and changed, and she 
sank into a big deep chair as if she were tired with even 
the effort of coming into the room. 

You haven’t been downstairs all this time ? ” he said. 

“Ho,” she answered; “they have been putting me 
through what they’re pleased to call a ^ rest cure.’ Fancy I 
I haven’t been allowed to lift my head, nor to have any- 
body come into the room but the doctor and the nurse. 
I couldn’t see a letter, or hear a paper read, or be told of 
anything that went on outside my room. The doctor said 
I mustn’t think of anything. As if I could stop thinking 
because he told me to! It seemed to me I should lose my 
mind trying not to use it. And the nurse was a perfect 
martinet: whatever the doctor said must be done, whether 
it was the worst thing for me or not.” 

“ What a pair of fools ! ” muttered Paul, scowling. 

“ And I had to be fed just so often, whether I wanted 
to eat or not. At first I felt so ill I couldn’t resist or com- 
plain, until, about four days ago, I made up my mind I 
wouldn’t stand it any longer.” 

“Why didn’t you ring for the servants, why didn’t you 
send for me ? ” 

“ The nurse never left me, day or night. She has an 
iron will, and I felt in her power. So I spoke to the doctor. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


449 


and we had quite a little scene. After he was gone I called 
the nurse and dismissed her and sent for my maid. All 
that quite used me up for twenty-four hours, but by yes- 
terday morning I was well enough to write you a little 
note, and to send for my dressmaker.” 

Paul did not quite like being bracketed with the dress- 
maker. “ I hope she came as promptly as I did,” he said. 

“ Oh, you may be sure ! If she had not come more 
promptly than you did I couldn’t have seen you, for I hadn’t 
any black clothes, you know, till she fixed this old dress 
up for me.” And she touched the grenadine with her fan. 

“ It’s a very pretty dress,” he said, but I shouldn’t have 
liked waiting for it to be ^ fixed up ’ for you, whatever 
that is.” 

She swung her fan open and shut with a little gesture 
that seemed to imply she was not going to talk any more 
about her clothes. At least so he understood it. 

“ And what did your illustrious doctor say when he 
came the next day and found you’d sent his nurse away ? ” 

“ He did not wait till the next day ; he came within 
two hours. I suppose she went straight and told him.” 

‘‘Well,” said Paul, trying to be patient, “well, what did 
he say ? ” 

“ Oh,” said Leonora evasively, “ I had the Figurehead 
in the room, and he didn’t say very much. He told me 
I had seriously endangered my health and he couldn’t be 
responsible.” 

“ And have you seen him since ? ” 

“H-no,” said Leonora, with her eyes fixed on her fan, 
flinging it out to its fullest length and letting it fall back 
again. “I didn’t think I needed any further treatment — 
just now, at any rate.” 

Paul was conscious of a great sensation of relief. And 
then he was conscious of a great sensation of shame that 
he felt relieved. When should he learn to trust Leonora? 
Who was more worthy to be trusted? 

There was a short silence. Then Leonora turned toward 
him, her face somehow changed, a little trouble gathering 
in it. 


450 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


It was fortunate,” she said, that I wasn’t shut up 
in my rest cure, for a cable message came yesterday, and 
if I hadn’t got it — ” She pulled it out of her pocket and 
handed it to him. He read it with keen eyes and a dark- 
ening face. 

“ She sails to-morrow, you see,” she said, watching his 
expression. “ She will be here a week from the day after 
to-morrow, won’t she, by that boat ? ” 

“ Yes,” he said, folding it slowly and handing it back 
to her, “ yes.” He brought a chair up beside hers and 
said, sitting down in it : “ And you — what are you going 
to do ? ” 

There was a little silence. 

“ I don’t want to talk as I talked that day,” he said 
slowly. “ I was very angry and very unreasonable. I see 
now, hard as it all has been for you, that — perhaps — ^you 
didn’t do wrong to stay. You will be glad always that 
you were here these last weeks. But — I don’t see any 
reason for — for your seeing her again — do you ? ” 

“ No,” said Leonora very low, “ I don’t want to meet 
her. I can’t see how it can be my duty.” 

“I’m sure it is not your duty. I’m sure it would be 
very unwise, on every account, for you to see her. I want 
you to — to listen to what I’ve got to say to you. There’s 
no use in pretending I’m not impatient to know if — if — ^I 
have any chance with you. I am impatient; I am unhappy. 
The thought that you are alone, that you need somebody 
to look after you, and that you won’t let me stand between 
you and troubles, little and great, makes me bitter and 
morose. You must not blame me if I am not gentle. I 
don’t think I’m a brute by nature, but being thwarted by 
you, by fate, by everything, seems to make me one. I don’t 
know how to explain myself to you. I’ve never cared for 
any one before; but since the first time I saw you, there 
in the Gare St. Lazare that night, I’ve had but one thought, 
but one intention: I would marry you or no one. After — 
after all that happened on the Touraine, I said to myself 
€t would be no one. What I did those seven days I suppose 
I’ve no reason to be proud of, but I had much provocation. 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


451 


After that, when I met you at Meadowburn, I more than 
forgave you everything. I adored you for your loyalty, for 
your purity. You seemed to me then, and you’ve seemed 
to me ever since, the only woman in the world that was 
worth a man’s devotion.” 

A faint sort of gasp came from Leonora, and she grew 
a little pale. It was really not quite fair to put her through 
all this when she was so ill; but Paul was relentless. He 
had been thwarted once too often; he would not trust her 
out of his sight till he was sure she knew all he had to 
tell her. Their two lives depended on it, maybe; she must 
listen, even if it hurt her. 

“ I resented your — your caprice — about the drive. I 
couldn’t account for it except by thinking you either liked 
that man Davidge or that you meant to try your power 
over us both. I wouldn’t submit to be put on a level with 
him. I made up my mind that till you gave me reason 
to think you — liked — me enough to show it a little — would 
leave you alone. That night on the staircase at the Hen- 
thorps’ dinner, I thought you had given me a sign that — 
that — at least you weren’t quite indifferent to me. And 
when I first heard the news of your father’s marriage, it 
seems to me a sort of frenzy came over me. I don’t know 
if — if I can make you understand — I felt that your danger 
and your helplessness gave you to me — that I had a right 
to you because — well, don’t you know, because of the power 
of my affection for you. I had had, ever since that night 
at the Benthorps’ dinner, the conviction that there was no 
one else you cared for. I don’t know why — it was just a 
conviction that I had. And when I found that there was 
no possibility of making you listen to me about going 
away, and that against your own first impulse you would 
not go because there was another man who had counselled 
you to stay — when I found all that, I held myself in con- 
tempt that I could not hate you. I tried to hate you, I 
tried to despise you, but I couldn’t do either; and I only 
succeeded in — caring for — you more than ever.” 

He got up and walked about the room, then he came 
back and sat down, and, leaning forward, with his arms 


452 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


on his knees, he looked at her intently for a moment and 
said: ‘‘Have I made you understand — or do you think Fm 
just — a fool?’^ 

She sat looking down; her eyes had never once met his; 
her breath was quick, and her colour went and came. She 
made a sort of negative gesture. 

“ You don’t think I’m a fool, then,” he said below his 
breath. 

“ Why should I ? ” she said very low. 

And then he seized her hands that lay in her lap, and 
sinking on one knee he bowed his head down on them; 
he kissed them and kissed them, and then, holding both in 
one of his, he drew her face down with his arm around 
her neck and held her close to him and said passionate 
words of love to her, a torrent of them. 

“ Oh, no ! ” said Leonora, a little frightened at last at 
something he said. “ Oh, no ! no ! no ! not for ever so long 
yet.” 

“Why not?” he persisted stoutly. “If my judg- 
ment’s worth anything, if I’m fit to take care of you, don’t 
you think you ought to listen to what I advise about 
this ? ” 

“ Oh, not in this, not in this ! ” she said hurriedly, get- 
ting up and walking toward the window. “ There’s plenty 
of time to talk about that — after a few months — after a 
year or two ” 

“Listen, Leonora! You’re so reasonable, so much more 
reasonable than any other girl in America — ^than any other 
woman living, I might say — that I can’t understand why 
you should not see in a moment that it’s the very wisest 
thing to do — the only thing, in point of fact, that can be 
done under the circumstances.” 

“I don’t see that at all,” she said, turning as abruptly 
away from the window as she had gone to it. “ I don’t see 
it at all. You promised to be reasonable, and I don’t think 
that’s reasonable in the least.” 

“ Hot reasonable, in the face of all the complications 
that that woman’s coming back creates? Hot reasonable, in 
view of the fact that you have no relatives living to protect 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


453 


you from her? I won’t hide from you that as your — your 
— ^husband I can do twice as much as I could do if I 
weren’t. And — and — can’t you see — it will look better — 
won’t it — that you have given me the right to serve you, 
not the mere privilege of doing it?” 

He followed her and tried to take her hand. But both 
her hands were grasping her fan, which flapped open and 
shut and shut and open. 

Oh, this will look better, that will look better! I am 
so tired of hearing about the looks of things ! Why don’t 
people talk about the right of things?” 

“Well, that’s just what I am going to talk of now,” 
he said, adroitly catching her hand and leading her to a 
sofa and sitting down beside her and keeping it firmly in 
his. “ I’m going to begin at the beginning ; at what’s the 
beginning of the right of things to you, I know. I’m 
going to tell you what Father O’Farrell said to me not two 
hours ago.” 

She gave a little start and said: “You’ve been to see 
F ather O’Farrell ? ” 

“ Yes,” he answered, “ I’ve been to see him more than 
once. Didn’t he tell you that I’d been to see him?” 

“ Ho,” she said, knitting her brow, “ no, he didn’t tell 
me.” 

“ Well, I’m glad he didn’t. I suppose he thought I’d 
better tell you myself. I don’t know whether he thought 
I’d succeed in making you consent to like me, but I think he 
rather hoped I would.” Then his voice grew more serious, 
and he said : “ I have told him that I was willing to make 
all the promises required of me. And there is no danger 
of my ever going back on my word; there’s no ambiguity 
in my mind about what I shall have to pledge myself to do. 
And you shall have perfect liberty in the practise of your 
religion — always, Leonora, always, so help me God. To say 
that I have not been brought up with prejudices against 
the Catholic Church would be an untruth. I have been 
brought up so; I have no doubt some of them will stick 
to me for a long while. We’re all of us prejudiced, the 
best of us. I suppose it’s only the great God who- sees 


454 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


straight and true, and whom nothing in heaven or earth 
can ever bias.” 

Leonora’s hand fluttered a little in his; she tried to 
speak, but could not control her voice enough to do it. 
There was a silence. 

By-and-by he said: About — about — the subject of — 
an early marriage, I am sure Father O’Farrell would be 
the first to advise it. I will depend upon his judgment in 
the matter; there seems to be so many things to recom- 
mend it. You have gone through so much, you should not 
have a feather’s weight of care about anything. Your health 
requires you to go away from the city at once. And I — 
I’ve been in the city all these months, and even I need 
another brand of air to breathe. We’ve no gathering of 
clans to hold off for. My father and my mother, if we 
want them, will be glad to come to the city for a day 
or so; if we don’t want them, they will equally be glad 
not to come. You told me the other day you hadn’t any- 
body — near of kin or of any great friendship, to whom 
you — were obliged to send.” 

“ Oh, it isn’t that ! ” murmured Leonora. 

^‘Well, then, what is it? Listen! This house has got 
to be shut. That woman must never get a foothold in it 
again. Your father’s death came sooner than she expected 
or she would not have gone so far away. You must be 
on the alert about every step you take. You not only 
must keep her from robbing you — that is the least of the 
two things she will try to do — but you must do your best 
to keep her from making a scandal, from parading the 
whole matter before the public. Nothing would suit her 
better than doing that. She has absolutely no shame; no- 
toriety smells sweet to her. She is greedy, and her greed 
must be satisfied in a measure.” 

“ Oh, I’m glad you think it must ! The lawyers seemed 
to think only of keeping the money away from her, and 
nothing about — about saving the family name.” 

^‘Exactly. The family name isn’t theirs, but it’s ours, 
isn’t it? And we can save it if we go the right way to 
work. This is what I have in mind to do. To-morrow is 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


455 


— Tuesday, isn^t it? A week from Wednesday her steamer 
may be in, certainly not before, possibly a little later; but 
we have to calculate for that. By twenty-four hours from 
now we will have the quickest-witted lawyers of the city 
busy on the case. Your father’s men are excellent in their 
way, but we want some one associated with them who is — 
more of a specialist, you know. You will have to see them 
once or twice, not more. After that I will be your spokes- 
man. The putting this house in order to leave is a baga- 
telle. On Monday we must be married.” 

Leonora gave a little cry and attempted to draw away 
her hand, but he kept it very fast in his. 

“ On Monday we must be married. The arrangements 
for that can be made in half an hour. The day we leave, 
Baptiste — ^he’s trusty, isn’t he? I rather like his looks — 
Baptiste will pay off the servants and dismiss them with a 
good bonus, for some of them may possibly be needed to 
testify; then put the house on a peace-footing — closing it 
up for the summer, that is. I have a man whom I trust 
to do all sorts of things; he will come here and stop with 
Baptiste. I don’t think the woman will get in the house 
while they are here to prevent it. And we will go away, 
to a cottage by the sea, and listen to the waves breaking 
on the beach below the windows, and forget there’s ever 
been any care or trouble in the world.” 

It is impossible — impossible ! ” said Leonora. Why ! 

I haven’t even got my mourning.” 

“ How long does it take to make two gowns — two gowns 
such as this one you’ve got on?” 

“How long? How can I tell you? You can’t imagine 
how they poke and poke. Things have to go back half a 
dozen times to be altered. And two gowns! Why, I shall 
have to have a dozen. Oh, it will be weeks — ^weeks — before 
they will be done.” 

“And you will be pining away in this hot city and I 
shall be kept out of the only vacation I may be able to 
take for months perhaps just because you don’t know how 
to put a dressmaker through her paces quicker than that! 
No; if she’s put on her mettle she can turn you out two 


456 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


gowns in less than four days. Offer her a thumping big 
sum for getting them here in three days and you’ll see 
she’ll do it.” 

“ Impossible ! I know her, I know the tribe. All that 
you get by hurrying them is to have your things spoiled.” 

“ Just let me try.” 

Oh, they’re not like tailors. You couldn’t pin them 
down to anything. They’d promise fair enough, but they’d 
disappoint you every time.” 

“ Just let me try.” 

Oh, no ; it would be impossible. And two dresses ! 
C^est a rire!” 

About the other dresses, I’ve this plan in my mind. 
Tradespeople will do anything for money, and I’ve got a 
great lot of it, Leonora, a great lot of it. I don’t know 
whether you know about — about my being rich. I’m very 
keen on getting hold of money, making good hauls and 
getting ahead of people that are trying to get ahead of me. 
I suppose it’s the power, the being able to get it and all 
that, that appeals to me. The only value it has had for 
me since — since I’ve wanted you — has been that I might 
make you happy — if I ever got you. I’ve felt as if I’d 
like to have a carpet spread before you when you stepped 
out of doors, as they used to do for kings and queens — and 
— and — to have a canopy carried over your head — that this 
slim white little wrist ” (and he kissed it) “ shouldn’t get 
tired holding up a paltry parasol. And that — that every- 
thing should be quiet and — ^like good music all around you 
— perfect and peaceful — not a sound that would hurt your 
ears — nor a sight that would make you quiver. And yet 
I’ve known it was all rot, even while I’ve thought it. For 
all the money in the world wouldn’t keep back a peal of 
thunder for the thousandth part of a second, and wouldn’t 
stop the rain, canopy or no canopy, from pelting down on 
your pretty head. I know you’ve got to take the troubles 
that less precious people are bound to take, but anything 
that money can stave off I mean to save you from. And 
this is just one of them, now isn’t it? The tradespeople 
shall come to you, and not you go to them; come to you 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


457 


by the seashore and not make you wait for them in the 
hot and stuffy city. Write out your order — what stuffs you 
want to look at, what sort of gowns you want to see — and 
I’ll make it to their interest to fetch them to you. They 
shall have a special car to bring their goods in, if they 
can’t transport ’em in the ordinary way. You shall see 
them in your own room, like a princess, and not wait your 
turn in their confounded salesrooms as they make other 
women do.” 

And he carried the day, as it seemed probable he would 
generally carry it. Ce West qu’une habitude d prendre; it 
was a good habit for her to take, no doubt he thought. 


CHAPTER VI 


V E mois de miel was just waning. It had been a dream 
Jj of bliss to these two young lovers lately wed.” 

Great trees shaded the charming roomy cottage 
which stood on a velvet lawn, with waves dashing on the 
beach below it. The Aladdin’s lamp that swings over Wall 
Street had evolved this for them in seven days. It was 
fresh, it was exquisitely furnished, it was filled with all 
the luxuries that have grown to be necessities with this 
generation; whether it was salvage from the wreck of some 
man who came to grief seven days before in Wall Street, 
or whether Paul had picked it up on the Monday that 
Leonora accepted him and turned loose in it a firm of 
artistic furnishers so-called, it is not necessary to ask. To 
the flowers in the vases and the books on the shelves, it 
was delicious. Coming from such a heat-smitten city, after 
such a strain of mind and body, it seemed like heaven. 
It was the first country air that either of them had breathed 
for months. They were like children let loose in a daisy- 
field in May; children so young that they could not re- 
member the May of the year before. 'No one had ever 
been so happy as they; no one ever could be so happy 
again. They had discovered the secret of the May; they 
and only they knew what it was in its perfection. 

It was the late afternoon of the fourth week since their 
marriage day. They had proposed to make it a high festiv- 
ity; a festivity, of course, d deux, for no one had invaded 
their paradise, and no one would have been civilly received 
if daring to invade it. They had many little plans and 
secrets from each other about its celebration. It is always 
amazing to watch lovers; the centuries-old convictions that 

458 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


459 


seem to have dawned on them alone. And everything is 
of such importance connected with the marvellous newly 
discovered life upon which they have just entered. You 
might as well reason with a baby sprawling on the nursery 
floor, the tenth one of the large family who had sprawled 
on that floor before; he grabs at the coloured ball that rolls 
from him, and crows with delight that he can creep fast 
enough to catch it in his pudgy hand. No baby ever caught 
that coloured ball before; he celebrates his conquest with 
all demonstrations of delight, and nobody wants to disillu- 
sion him. 

When, the day but one before the great festival, there 
came a despatch from the lawyers saying that Paul must 
meet them without fail the next morning at ten, and 
making the reasons clear beyond controversy, it was at first 
rejected by both of them without hesitation. Several tele- 
grams passed over the wires before Paul gave in. He had 
to go, he must accept it. And accumulated work at the 
office made it imperative that he stay away the night and 
come back only in time to eat the festival dinner, alack 
and alas! He was heroic, and comforted Leonora as well 
as he could. 

The time had seemed endless to her: the length of that 
day, the dreariness of that lonely evening, the blackness of 
that long night! The second day was less deplorable, and 
had passed more quickly. Paul would be back at seven 
o’clock; he had telegraphed that in the morning. There 
were a thousand things to do to be ready for him. She 
was embroidering him something that must be finished. 
She spent two or three hours getting the flowers from the 
garden and arranging them in the house. She put all his 
drawers in order, had all the silver on his toilette table 
cleaned for the third time in a week. 

By three o’clock the sky began to grow dark, and there 
were mutterings of thunder. Her heart sank; she hoped 
it wouldn’t be a rainy afternoon; he would not like it if 
she went to meet him if it rained; he had said so when 
he went away. The wind soon died down, the sea was 
black, with glassy long waves that broke sullenly without 


460 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


a boom upon the beach; there was an oppression in the 
sultry air that is rarely felt beside the sea. It was all un- 
natural, and there was something awful in the stillness of 
the birds, in the motionless hang of the great branches 
above the house. The tide was going out; the storm didnT 
come up against the tide, Paul had told her. Why was it 
coming up now? Oh, such blackness, such horrible black- 
ness! She was afraid to stay outside for fear of the light- 
ning, but inside it was dark and close and hot. Baptiste 
and two of the maids were hurrying about shutting windows 
and doors and fastening blinds. But the rain did not come, 
though by-and-by sharp zigzag lightning flashed more 
often upon the black surface of the stagnant sky. The air 
seemed charged with electricity; there were no peals of 
thunder, but low groanings of it as if it were in pain or in 
captivity, longing to get forth and rend the heavens and 
smite the earth in fury. 

It seemed an endless afternoon. The clouds would shift 
a little for a moment, and then others would slowly come 
up and would look blacker than their predecessors had 
looked, and a forked pattern of fearful shapes would em- 
broider itself upon them; but no rain, no wind, and the 
heat more stifling every minute. Leonora had always been 
timid about thunderstorms even in France, where they are 
so tame compared with the American variety. She was 
trembling with fear, and if she had not been ashamed she 
would have kept one of the maids beside her all the time. 
It seemed as if the afternoon would never end. At half- 
past six the carriage came around to the door, and she sent 
out rugs and wraps and umbrellas for Paul’s drive back. 
The drive to the station took half an hour, the drive back 
another half-hour; in another hour he would be here. The 
clouds even seemed less black, though she had to have the 
candles lighted on her dressing-table when she began to 
dress. The thunder was still growling, and the sky was 
scintillating with wild electric hieroglyphics, but she did not 
seem to mind, or she was getting used to it, and nothing 
mattered now that he was nearly here. If only it did not 
rain and he was not welcomed by a deluge 1 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


461 


The candles were alight on his dressing-table as well as 
on hers at half-past six. The lamps were aglow downstairs, 
the flowers in the drawing-room, the dining-table with its 
glitter of silver seen beyond, were all in festival order. If 
the long-threatening storm would only hold off till he got 
here ! 

At last! It was nearly ten minutes late when she heard 
the welcome rumble of wheels, and ran to the door in a 
flutter of joy. To her amazement, the carriage turned off 
toward the stable and did not come to the house at all. 
She waited for a few minutes, wondering why Paul chose 
to go first to the stable; perhaps something was wrong with 
the horses, but it was not like him to do that. She was 
ashamed to run out there to meet him. She would wait. 
But in a moment she saw the coachman taking out the 
horses and backing the carriage into the stable, with an 
anxious look toward the sky. What — Paul had not come? 
Impossible! She had not for a moment doubted that he 
would come, after his telegram of the morning. He would 
have sent a second one if he had had to take another train. 
Ho doubt the stupid coachman had one in his pocket all 
the time. She rang sharply for Baptiste and told him 
to go to the stable and ask the man why he had not de- 
livered it. Baptiste came quickly back and told her the 
man said there was no telegram; he hadn’t come to the 
house at once because he wanted to get the horses and 
the carriage under cover before the rain. 

Leonora turned away that Baptiste should not see her 
face. She felt dazed; something must have happened to 
him. But no; maybe the man had not gone to the office, 
and the telegram hadn’t been sent out to her because the 
storm was so threatening. Being so far from the office 
certainly would make a difference in such weather as this. 
Baptiste returned from his second visit to the stable. Ho, 
the man hadn’t gone to the office. He was only thinking 
of getting the horses and carriage home. That accounted 
for it, she said to herself; there was a telegram waiting 
for her there. But the great drops were beginning to pat- 
ter down. She could not send the man back in the face 
30 


462 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


of such a storm. She knew there was another train after 
this, but only one. That was the one disadvantage of this 
paradise — it was off the main line. But for honeymoons 
that were not interrupted that was an advantage, keeping 
the world away. Bemembering that the last train came in 
about half -past nine, she decided to send down to meet that. 

She could not eat much dinner, and was glad when it 
was taken away. The man was ordered to go to meet that 
last train, and if his master did not come, to go to the 
telegraph-office and see if there were any messages. It was 
a far cry to ten o’clock, but she tried to make the best 
of it. Of course, Paul would come then; people never did 
come in the train by which you expected them. It was 
part of living in the country to have that happen. 

The storm, after all its threatenings and its first big 
drops, held off, and finally took itself away. The moon was 
nearly at the full, and it would have been comparatively 
light but for a heavy fog that covered everything like a 
blanket. Leonora could not see four feet from the veran- 
da. She walked up and down there and wondered at the 
stillness. The horses occasionally stamping on the stable 
fioor quite a distance from the house sounded like the boom- 
ing of cannon. The waves were lapping on the shore with 
a monotonous sound. Such a place as this was very lonely 
without Paul. She should go with him every time he had 
to go to town, she had quite made up her mind to that. 
Ten o’clock came, half -past ten o’clock. By this time every 
nerve was strained to its tensest, and she scarcely knew 
what she dreaded most. When, at nearly eleven o’clock, 
she heard the wheels on the drive, she scarcely could stand. 
The carriage came directly to the door, but she saw in a 
moment that it was empty. 

“ Well,” she said to the man in a sharp, quick tone, 
“ well, did you go to the telegraph-office ? ” 

Yes, he said he did. But there were no wires working. 
They hadn’t been able to get a message over since half- 
past six o’clock. The last one had come then, and they 
wouldn’t probably get a word over any line before to-mor- 
row. It was the storm had played the mischief with the 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


463 


wires. And the train hadn’t come from the junction. There 
was no news from it, but it was rumoured there’d been a 
big accident on the main line, and the obstruction wouldn’t 
be cleared away before to-morrow. The local train — the one 
from the junction — would not come till there were mails to 
bring on from the main line; it was a way they had in 
this part of the country; nobody had ever heard of such 
rules anywhere but on this tupenny-hapenny road. 

“What — what did the people at the station say about 
it ? ” Leonora tried to command her voice. 

He said, Oh, well, they thought there’d been a big acci- 
dent; he supposed there wasn’t any doubt they were right 
about that; but just what part of the line it had been on 
they couldn’t say — nobody could say. A place that hadn’t 
even a telephone was a little too one-horse for him. He’d 
bet a good deal there wouldn’t be a word from the junction 
before noon to-morrow. He’d heard some young fellows 
talking about taking a fast horse one of them had and 
driving to the junction, but he thought they’d given it up; 
the horse had gone a little lame, and anyhow the fog was 
too thick; it wasn’t much of a road for bad nights. 

Were there several roads? 

Yes, three or four; and it wouldn’t be easy to keep to 
the right one, and one might be miles out of the way in this 
fog before one knew it. 

She walked two or three times pp and down on the 
veranda while she tried to think. It was no use her going 
to meet him and missing him. If — if he were alive, he 
would find a way to get home. There might be other roads 
the man did not know about. Ho, she must not go away; 
he would come home, she knew it. The man must just 
put a fresh horse — the best in the stable — before the light 
road wagon and go at once to the junction, twenty-five 
miles away; he must take with him snme intelligent man 
from the village who knew the way. He must not lose a 
minute. She would give him money if he made good time. 
He must manage to find out at every village if the wires 
were working yet, and he must send her a despatch if they 
were. At the station in the village one of their own stable- 


464 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


boys must wait on his bicycle all night, to bring her the 
first word that came. 

When all this was done, and she heard the voices of the 
men dying away down the road as they went off, the thought 
that she had fought off while there was anything to do 
came back to her; it was the one that had flamed through 
her mind when she first saw that the carriage was empty — 
Paul was dead! Killed, mangled, lying on a field of blood 
among heaps of others killed and mangled. She had read 
how such fields looked; the story of such slaughters had 
taken great hold of her when she first came to America, 
and for a while she had been secretly timid about railway 
journeys. But one gets used to everything, and she had 
not thought of the danger lately; even when Paul went 
away two days ago, this alarm had not been part of her 
unhappiness at his going. But now ! She could not reason 
with herself; she could not shake it off, not for a moment, 
not for the time she could draw a breath. It was the 
blackness of darkness for the time it lasted. She could 
not submit; her whole being was in revolt. She walked 
up and down the veranda and through the silent rooms; 
the sight of the flowers she had gathered that morning when 
the sun was shining for the last time for him — for her — 
did not have the effect of stabbing her with grief, but of 
rousing in her a spirit of fierce rebellion. She had not de- 
served this, no; it was wanton, it was cruel. It was power 
without love. It was almost malice. It was — it was 

And then she caught sight of the servants whimpering 
and whispering in a corner of the hall, and of Baptiste, 
white and anxious-looking, silently putting away the wines. 

“ Send the servants to bed,” she said. “ And you can 
go yourself — if you choose. I shall stay up. Leave some 
lights.” 

Baptiste obeyed in so far as to send the women upstairs, 
but he silently rearranged the table for one, and put cognac 
instead of champagne and cold meats in place of bonbons, 
and made preparations for coffee, and renewed the bowl 
of ice, and put fresh candles in the candlesticks. It was 
not much to do, and was in the line of his duty, but it 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


465 


seemed to comfort him. The last sounds from the servants’ 
quarter died away, and then the long, silent watch began. 

Leonora was outside on the terrace. The dense white 
fog had come up to within three feet of her; when she 
stretched out her hand she could not touch it, but it was 
there — impalpable, like her dread. The waves were rolling 
up on the beach, no doubt, but the sound scarcely marred 
the silence. She was sure the sea was glassy, and she knew 
the waves were lapping fainter and fainter, like the life in 
the breast of a dying man; and the stillness was like the 
stillness of death. 

“No one can ask me to submit to this desolation,” she 
said to herself in gasps as her dress brushed against the 
wet grass that bordered the terrace she was pacing. “It 
would be hypocrisy to say I submitted. It would be hypoc- 
risy to say I accepted such a punishment. A punishment 
for what? I cannot — I cannot — I haven’t deserved it. I 
have tried to do right, no matter what it cost. I didn’t 
ask this happiness, but it came. I thought God sent it — 
but now — but now — it seems to me I don’t believe any- 
thing ” 

Time passed on; the silence grew deeper, the mist smoth- 
ered everything now; even the sea seemed dead. Not a 
sound of life about the smitten house, so little time ago 
alive with interests, duties, pleasures. It was so cold out 
in the wet fog; Leonora shuddered, and her limbs seemed 
suddenly to give way under her. Her fierce pace slackened, 
she crept into the house, holding by the railing that led 
up to the summer-parlor where she and Paul always sat 
after dinner, and sometimes late into the evening. How 
strange it all was; she felt faint and frightened at herself. 
The wicked thoughts she had been thinking fell from her 
like the mist-soaked cloak that was slipping from her shoul- 
ders to the floor. There was no light, but she felt her way 
along to the broad couch stacked with pillows, where some- 
times Paul lay and smoked after they had left the dining- 
room, while she sat by him and while they talked — talked! 

She sank on her knees beside it and buried her face in 
the pillows and sobbed. A faint odour of cigars still lin- 


466 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


gered in the pillows; her hand touched a book that had 
been buried under them — a book that Paul had been reading 
only two days ago. She knew by the touch what book it 
was ; she laid her cheek against it, and kissed it and sobbed. 

Leonora always said her prayers in French, and in that 
tongue they do not tu-toi le Bon Dieu ” ; that seems to 
them lacking in reverence. And so that night, in broken 
words, she said to Him such things as these : “ I never 
demanded happiness, though of course I wanted it if it 
was right for me to have it — but I was willing to go on, 
the way everything seemed bound to go in my life — dull 
and sad and hard. But I didn^t rebel — I bore it — ^yes, I 
bore it! And if, O my God, if I am your child, and if you 
love me as I have believed, why did you give me this gift 
just to strike it away from me in such a minute? If suf- 
fering is as precious as they say; if, as they’ve taught me, 
it is of more value than earthly happiness, the very best 
of it, why, why, why did you give me Paul? I am your 
child; you mean everything for my good — ah! It would 
have been kinder to me never to have let me know what 
it was to have him love me, just to have had him torn 
from me like this. Oh, listen to me! I am so unhappy. 
Give him back to me! If he is in danger, rescue him! If 
he is dead, revive him! Yes, even that — ^you can. Seigneur 
Dieu, you can ! I ask it, I entreat it, I demand it ! ” 

Kneeling, she stretched up her clasped hands and lifted 
her face to the stem darkness above her. 

** DominOy audivi te vocantem me; nunc exaudi me in- 
vocantem te!” St. Bernard, great saint of God, dared to 
pray thus. The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and 
the violent take it by force; but poor young Leonora, had 
she any right to speak so to her Master? 

She sank sobbing on the floor and buried her face in 
her hands and begged Him to forgive her and to have pity 
on her and on Paul, and to absolve them both from what- 
ever they had done wrong in all their lives. 

The night seemed interminable in its passing, but it 
passed. If the dense mist had lifted even for a moment 
there would have been faint rays of dawn in the sky, but 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


467 


it looked only darker to Leonora as, struggling at last to 
her feet, she stood leaning out of a window that fronted 
toward the drive from the gate. Her hearing was so acute 
and overstrained that she could have heard the faintest 
movement of wheels, or even steps, on the road long before 
they reached the gate. There was not a sound to deceive 
one this heavy, fog-steeped night; no insect moved, no bird 
twittered. Sometimes, indeed, the leaves shed down great 
drops of water, but that was not a noise like any other. 
More than once she had walked the whole length of the 
drive to the gate and back, but she should not go again — 
there was no use. She leaned her head down on her arms 
and tried to stop thinking, her mind was so tired. 

Suddenly, a sound ! She sprang erect and listened 
breathlessly. It was not from the drive, it was from the 
beach — a step ! And then the latch of the beach-gate 
dropped. In an instant, panting, she was darting down the 
steps of the veranda, her hand on her heart, listening in- 
credulously. For what could come from the beach, that 
long, wide, lonely beach, a mile or two through heavy sand 
to the inlet? No one had ever come that way, not even 
a fisherman. And yet, a sound, a step. And — a call. 

“ Leonora ! ” 

“Yes, Paul!” 

The fog swallowed her up as, dazed, she ran toward the 
voice. Half-way down the path Paul caught her in his 
arms and held her, clinging to him, in a vicelike grasp. His 
arms trembled; they did not either of them speak for a 
moment. The revulsion of feeling was so great, Leonora 
almost felt ashamed that he should suspect her long vigil 
of despair. 

“You’re late,” she faltered. “,I’ve been — so — ^worried — 
what’s kept you? Has there been an — accident?” 

He held her closer, and she felt strong pulsations in his 
limbs and body. “ Yes,” he said huskily. There’s been 
an accident — on the main line ” 

They did not speak again as they went up the path 
toward the house, which they could not yet see for the 
fog. He did not relax his tight hold on her, and she clung, 


468 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


to him, breathing quick. They were nearly at the veranda 
steps before they could see them. He did not let go his 
grasp of her as they went up the steps, and she tripped 
a little on her dress and tore it. He had to loose her for a 
minute while she stooped and gathered it up on her arm. 

“ My dress is so draggled and wet,” she said, panting. 

IVe been so many times out to the road to see if I couldn’t 
catch some sound of your coming. Oh, I thought you’d 
never come ! ” And there was almost a nervous ripple of 
laughter in her caressing voice as she pressed closer to him. 

At that moment Baptiste, hearing them, threw open the 
dining-room door where he had been renewing and keeping 
alight the candles on the table and the shaded lamps on 
the wall. The first instinct in his well-trained breast was 
to hurry off silently and swiftly to make the coffee and to 
uncork a bottle that he had had under his hand all these 
anxious hours. “ See, Baptiste has been waiting up for you 
as well as I ! ” said Leonora. “We thought you would be 
starved as well as tired.” And she lifted her eyes to his 
face. “ Why, Paul ! ” she exclaimed in a startled voice, put- 
ting her hand up to his head, “you’ve lost your hat, and — 
and — your hair’s all messed. And, oh ! ” she gave a sharp 
cry» “you’re hurt! You’ve had a wound! There’s blood 
on your shirt — and on your hands ” 

“ It isn’t my blood,” he said, with an abandoned sort of 
gesture. “I haven’t had a wound. There’s not a bruise 
on me, there’s not a scratch ! Ah, my God, my God ! ” He 
grew suddenly pale and sank down upon a chair and put 
his hands before his eyes. 

Leonora threw herself on her knees beside him and put 
her arms around his neck. “ Tell me what’s happened. 

0 Paul, don’t, don’t!” For great sobs were shaking him 
from head to foot. Her cry brought Baptiste instantly 
with the bottle and a wine-glass in his hand. Leonora 
held it to his lips, but he shuddered and put the glass away. 

“I can’t,” he said. “The smell of it — they poured it 
down my throat — when — ^when — ” He got up. “I can’t 
talk about it all yet,” he said with a shiver. “I — I wish 

1 could stop thinking about it for a little while.” He laid 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


469 


his arm around her shoulder and she pulled it across her 
breast with her other hand. 

“We won’t talk about it yet,” she said. “You’ll feel 
better when Baptiste has brought you some supper — or 
breakfast — or whatever it is. Ah! there he comes with it. 
See! Now you’ll sit down at the table, and you’ll drink 
a cup of bouillon just to please me.” 

He drank the bouillon, certainly not to please himself, 
and tried to swallow some bread she gave him, but the 
effort was too much for him. “ By-and-by,” he said un- 
easily, getting up. “ Let’s go into the veranda. I — I want 
to try to stop thinking about it — for a while— we won’t 
talk about it — as you say — ^we’U be quiet, and you’ll sit 
beside me while I smoke — perhaps smoking’s what I want 
— it’ll quiet my nerves.” He threw himself on the chaise 
longue, and she arranged the pillows under his head, and 
knelt by him for a few moments as he lit his cigar and 
made an attempt to smoke. But in a little while he threw 
it away and sat up, leaning forward, with one hand grasp- 
ing hers and the other supporting his head. 

“ It’s all such a jumble in my mind. Maybe if I try 
to tell you about it, it will clear things up a little to me..” 

She tried to discourage him, soothing him and trying to 
turn him away from it, but it was no use. 

“ I got in good time for my train — this — this afternoon 
— ^was it — or yesterday — ” he said. “ Two minutes or more 
to spare. I settled my valise and things in the Pullman 
car — ah! good heavens, I wonder where they are? I’ve 
never thought of them till now. I suppose — ^well, it doesn’t 
matter. What was I saying ? Then I started to* go into 
the smoking-car as the train was moving. Just in front 
of me I saw a young fellow swing himself up by the hand- 
rail. It was a close shave; he just saved himself; he had 
been running, for he was flushed. A second more and he’d 
have lost the train — ah! — and he’d have thought that was 
bad luck! He had three or four parcels in his hand. I 
noticed him, I don’t know why. Some other men in the 
train chaffed him; they were in the habit of going every 
day in and out together, I suppose, and had their jokes about 


470 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


his wife and the little boy and all the things he had to 
bring out for them. I thought what a hard life it would 
be, working early and late, and for so little, and about the 
difference between his life and mine. I wondered, I re- 
member, what salary he got for his work after all the going 
in and out. I just watched him — yes — iCs strange — how 
little we know. Well, after a while I went back to the 
Pullman car. And I had such good news for you about 
that woman; that we’d got her in a tight place, and that 
she’d hold her tongue and be thankful. And I thought 
of the things in my Valise that I’d got for you and that 
I knew you’d like — and I — I was very happy; it seemed 
such ages since I’d been away from you. I was tired, I’d 
hurried so, and I suppose I must have fallen asleep, for all 
in a moment — the most awful crash — I seemed to be falling 
— falling — such din — such horror — and then a darkness — 
and I was pinned down under hot iron. I couldn’t move an 
inch. I don’t know now what it was that happened to me. 
I couldn’t turn my head, I couldn’t stir a hand’s-breadth. 
I thought there was a vibrating, a settling down of the 
enormous bulk above me. The space seemed to me to be 
contracting, but perhaps it wasn’t. The blackness, though! 
The blackness! There was a roaring outside of voices, of 
seething, hissing steam, of hacking and pounding that vi- 
brated, and of the furious rushing out of water. But it 
was all confused, nothing was distinct. What air there 
was to breathe was hot and foul, and it seemed to me it was 
gradually growing less and less and I was suffocating. I 
was on my hands and knees and, my head being low down, 
it began to be hard for me to draw my breath.” 

‘‘Don’t talk about it any more, Paul, don’t! I can’t 
bear it, and you can’t.” 

Paul held her hand still closer ; after a little he went on : 
“ I felt it was the last hour of my life, almost the last mo- 
ment. And I thought of you, Leonora, and of — of your — 
being left alone. And of how happy we had been — and of 
how life had looked to me such a little while ago. And 
then I thought of something else — it seemed to take hold 
of me almost more than the thought of leaving you. It 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


471 


was — about — my soul — and God. I can’t tell you what it 
all was — I didn’t think it in words — but it was like — like 
being where you didn’t need a language. And then there 
was a while that I didn’t think, that I didn’t know any- 
thing; and then suddenly there came a blow of something 
iron struck on the iron around me, and a man’s voice called 
out, and he struck another blow and listened, and I knew 
they were trying to find out if there were people pinned 
in under there. I tried to call, but my voice didn’t seem 
to make any sound, and I couldn’t move hand or foot to 
strike a blow that would make a noise. And they passed 
on, and I could hear they were striking and listening, and 
they went further and further on, and then I lost the sound 
of the blows and of the voices. That was the worst mo- 
ment of all — I don’t know what I did — something frantic 
— but when I sank back I heard a man call out: ^Come 
here, fellows! Come here! I’ll stake my life there’s some- 
body fastened down under here ! Come quick ! ’ And then 
I didn’t know any more till I smelled brandy, and some- 
thing stung my throat, and somebody was bending over 
me as I lay on the grass; and after a minute he said to 
some one else, lifting himself up : ^ Good ! He’s all right ! ’ 
One of the men raised me to my feet and said: ‘You’re 
right as a trivet; just hold on to that fence till you feel 
a little steadier; I’ll be back in a minute,’ and they hurried 
away to help some other men who were lifting up a young 
girl near. Her arms were hanging limp and her head fell 
back. They wanted to get her to the grass to lay her down. 
She was pretty and young; young as you are, only slight 
and small. The men were careful of her; they laid her 
down gently and they worked over her for a long time. 
I heard them talking together low for a while, and then 
they got up and shook their heads and said it was no use, 
and they ought not to lose any more time. 

“ All this while I had been slowly coming to my senses 
and taking in what was around me. The grass near me 
was covered with dead bodies. I suppose they’d found they 
were dead, for they didn’t move; the men had probably 
brought them here from the rough gravelly part — the road- 


472 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


bed, where the great wrecked train loomed up like a twisted 
monster. Around this were heaps of wounded lying; some 
were dead; the men stepped across them, and sometimes 
stumbled over them, hunting for the wounded that were in 
the worst case. There was some light from the moon, but 
the fog was thick, and the men had only three or four 
lanterns. The cries of pain were insufferable. Just as I 
was trying to see if I could let go the fence and turn and 
help there was the whistle of a train; it was the hospital 
special, with doctors and nurses. In a minute they were 
swarming over the place, and the grass around me was soon 
covered with the wounded they brought to it. But still, 
for all that, there were too few for all the work. I went 
stumbling along toward the place where there were most 
lying helpless — where the cars were piled up, splintered and 
bent and burnt. There were lights now — great flaming 
lights — to show the doctors and nurses where to find the 
ones that had need of them. I nearly stumbled over the 
body of a man; he lay with his face up, an awful wound 
on his forehead. In one hand he was clutching a paper 
parcel; it was half tom open, and I could see what was 
in it — a white, fluffy thing such as women wear around 
their necks. And there was blood on it, hlood — ah, me! 
And just beyond lay a child’s toy — a little horse and cart. 
It wasn’t broken at all; it was just as fresh as when it 
came out of the shop. The light was flaring over the place. 
I tried to lift the poor fellow in my arms ; I knew it was the 
one who had mn to catch this death-trap train, and who had 
swung himself up, panting, by the rail. Another man came 
when I called him to help me, and he ran for a doctor, who 
was there in an instant — they were very good — those doctors. 
But when he looked at the great gash on the head, one could 
see he knew in a minute nothing could be done. ‘ Poor 
fellow,’ he said, ‘ he never knew what hurt him ; it was the 
work of a second,’ and he turned away. 

^‘But I couldn’t give him up. I tried to believe that 
that poor young thing waiting and watching for him 
wouldn’t have to be told he’d never come back. She doesn’t 
know it yet. Think of it, Leonora, she doesn’t know it! 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


473 


This minute, maybe, she’s walking up and down the room 
— and listening at the window— and leaning over the boy 
asleep — We must be good to her, Leonora; you’ll know 
what to say to her — and that boy — I’ll charge myself with 
educating him and getting him on in life when he grows 
up. It’ll be something to do with that money — that money 
that isn’t worth a wisp of straw when it comes to — to 
facing — what I’ve faced to-night. 

“ And then I had to lay him down and go away to where 
others were moaning and crying — and I worked and worked, 
for there weren’t any too many to help — they say there 
never was a worse slaughter. I don’t know what time it 
was — when I began to feel pretty faint. One of the train- 
men — a fellow who belongs about here, I think — seemed to 
know me, and he said: ‘Look here, Mr. Fairfax, you’re 
about played out. You’d better get home as quick as you 
can. If you don’t mind a rough sort of getting there, I 
can put you in the way of it.’ He looked at his watch and 
called out to a countryman who was leaning against a pile 
of debris with his hands in his pockets, and asked him if 
he couldn’t get up his team in double-quick time and take 
me to the inlet, where there was a small steam launch that 
brought market truck from the neighbouring farms every 
night. It would just be going back empty. Once on that, 
I would be home quicker than any other way; I would be 
landed a mile and a half from my place, he said, and I 
had only to follow the beach to get there. The promise of 
money made the rustic hurry; in a few minutes we were 
flying through the fog on a good hard road. The boat 
was just pushing off, but they put back for me. I lay on 
the deck and tried to quiet myself — but the men kept talk- 
ing about the wrecked train — I was glad when they set me 
ashore at the inlet — the boat doesn’t land there, but they 
were willing to do it for money. 

“ When they pushed off and left me there alone in the 
thick, white fog, I felt faint again. The beach is so wide 
and the sand is so deep — I must have made a great many 
zigzags. I couldn’t see a foot before my face — it was a 
horrible feeling. I got weaker and weaker, and I had to 


474 


THE TENTS OF WICKEDNESS 


throw myself down and rest a good many times. I didn’t 
know at all that I hadn’t passed the house j I remembered 
there was no house between ours and the inlet, but I might 
have passed it a dozen times without knowing it. I could 
hear the faint lap of the water, and that was the only 
sound; but I didn’t dare to go down close to it for fear I 
might fall unconscious, and the tide was coming in. I sank 
down in the sand so that every step seemed to take it out 
of me. It was like hours — I don’t know how long it was. 
At last I smelt something like flowers — roses — and mignon- 
ette — and I stopped and then listened — but there was no 
sound — only that faint smell that I suppose the fog pressed 
down — so faint sometimes I lost it — and then I followed it, 
and I struggled through the beach-grass and felt my way 
along till my hand touched the stone wall — and I knew 
I’d got home ” 

There was a long silence, and then a sort of shudder 
passed through him. He started to his feet and walked 
up and down the room. “ What’s a man to do with his life 
when it’s been handed back to him like this ? ” he said, 
stopping before her. ‘‘Help me — Leonora — help me never 
to forget ” 

( 1 ) 


THE END 

: 7 





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